Caltech
by rbnnybt
Summary: Starring Reid and Garcia at Caltech, and featuring the Great Cyanide Siege of Gates Lecture Hall and the Campus Creeper.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer 1: I do not own Criminal Minds.

Disclaimer 2: I do not own Caltech, although I did go to college there. All characters are fictional, regardless of how much they may resemble actual persons.

Author's Note: The format of this story is unusual. It alternates between 1994-1995 and 2010. I hope the weird format doesn't bother people too much, since I've already got a bunch of chapters written and plan to update regularly. I just need to proofread the chapters before I add them to the story.

Some of the chapters contain quite a bit of nerd speak, but I reserve the right to nerd speak as much as I want in a story about my favorite TV nerds. Nerd speak clarifications may be found at the end of each chapter.

This is my first ever fanfiction. Reading &/ Reviewing are much appreciated. Enjoy!

* * *

Chapter 1

August 1994

Penelope Garcia strolled over the worn bricks of the Olive Walk, waiting for her parents and brothers to arrive. She glanced down every now and then to avoid stepping on the sticky olives that dropped out of the gray-green leaves above.

The only person she had seen all morning had been a twelve- or thirteen-year-old boy who had asked her for directions to the Student Activities Center. She had pointed out the door to the basement of the South Houses where the SAC was located, and he had thanked her with a nervous little smile and an awkward little wave.

Penelope checked her watch for the third time in five minutes. It was 11:00 AM. Her family should have been here an hour ago.

They had driven down from SF to visit her. They were staying at a hotel in downtown LA. Even with SoCal traffic, it shouldn't have taken them this long to drive to Pasadena.

Penelope smiled as she conjured up a visual of her family driving down the freeway. Her stepdad, Rick, would be driving his neon green convertible - the "Mid-Life-Crisis-Avertible". Her mom, Phoebe, would be riding shotgun, trying to convince her stepdad to close the roof so they could turn on the air-conditioning. Her oldest brother, Josh, would be driving his Hippiemobile. He would let Marcos ride up front with him and banish the two sixteen-year-olds, Jonathan and Alejandro, to the back.

Josh, Jonathan, and Penelope were Phoebe's kids from her first marriage. Marcos and Alejandro were Rick's kids from his first marriage. Penelope thought of her family as a significantly less sane but substantially more interracial version of the Brady Bunch.

The family was visiting her at Caltech because she wasn't going home for the summer. After finishing her freshman year in June, Penelope had joined the summer research program and started working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

She worked for Dr. Tracy Schmidt, a JPL scientist who led one of many teams on the Galileo mission. The Galileo spacecraft was en route to Jupiter and not scheduled to arrive until late next year, but it had been in perfect position to observe the collision of Comet Shoemaker-Levy with Jupiter in July. It was the first time that modern science had ever witnessed the collision of a comet with a planet.

As an astronomy major, Penelope was thrilled. She was right in the thick of the action. She had gushed about it on the phone to her parents every week, then everyday after the impacts had started in mid-July.

It was now mid-August, and the JPL team was immersed in a detailed analysis of the impact data. Dr. Schmidt wanted to calculate the temperature, energy, and size of fireballs created by the impacts of multiple comet fragments upon Jupiter's atmosphere.

Penelope wanted to learn more about data analysis in astronomy. She was working on algorithms for separating signal from noise that would allow the team to document small fireballs near Galileo's limits of detection. She planned to spend the rest of the summer implementing the algorithms as code and testing them out on the mountains of data from Galileo.

"About time," muttered Penelope, as she spotted Marcos crossing the lawn in front of the Athenaeum. He was followed by a police officer. There was no sign of her parents or other brothers. He turned around to say something to the police officer.

Penelope shivered involuntarily in the ninety-five-degree heat.

* * *

Spencer Reid entered a combination into the door that the girl on the Olive Walk had pointed out to him. He wondered if he should have introduced himself.

"Wasn't it appropriate to introduce oneself to one's fellow students?" he pondered. "But what if one's fellow students didn't really wish to know oneself?" he considered.

He had been a little flustered about approaching a pretty blonde girl to ask for directions in the first place, but he had seen no way around it because the Student Activities Center wasn't shown on any maps of campus.

Spencer pursed his lips with a sigh as he jogged down a flight of stairs into the featureless interior of the SAC. The blissful cold within distracted him from his misgivings. Having grown up in Las Vegas, Spencer was used to heat, but he was also used to air-conditioning. He had woken up twenty minutes ago in a sweaty daze, stepped out of bed, and fallen through the six feet of air between his bunk bed and the floor.

The SAC was empty, as was every other location within or near the Student Houses. Anyone who had not gone home for the summer was still asleep.

Spencer had arrived at Caltech a month early because his academic advisor, Professor Michelson, had suggested it. What Professor Michelson didn't say was that a twelve-year-old child prodigy on his first trip away from home would need to adjust to life on his own before the Fall Term started in September. What Professor Michelson didn't know was that Spencer Reid had been living on his own wits for the past three years, ever since his father had left him alone with his schizophrenic mother.

Diana's best friend and former colleague, Anne, had escorted Spencer to Caltech and helped him move into his room in Ricketts House. Spencer had asked Anne to check on his mother every week while he was away at college. She had promised him and hugged him tightly before leaving.

Spencer walked down the white hallway, jiggling the handles on all the white doors.

The first door that opened led to a large bunker-like room adorned with graffiti on the walls and littered with bottles of spray paint on the floor. At the end of the room was a more dilapidated door bearing a metal sign that read "Unauthorized Personnel Only". Spencer tried the door.

It opened onto a maze of pipes lit by bare bulbs hanging from a low ceiling. It was warm, humid, and musty.

Spencer recognized it as a steam tunnel.

The guy down the hall in Ricketts House had told him to look in the steam tunnels under the SAC for a stash of ladders. Spencer hadn't gotten a chance to ask where exactly the SAC, the steam tunnels, or the ladders were located before the guy had disappeared into the computer lab, the only air-conditioned room in Ricketts House.

Spencer needed a ladder to climb into and out of bed.

The steam tunnels were dark and creepy. Pipes and cables of all sizes lined the walls, ceiling, and floor. Steam hissed out of joints in some of the pipes, and water dripped out of leaks in others. Fans whirred in unseen corners.

Spencer backed away from the entrance. He really didn't want to go in there.

This was exactly the sort of setting that would send his mother into an episode of frenzied paranoia. She would scream at him to get away from the pipes. She would warn him about the mutant amphibious creature that Caltech bioengineers were designing for the military. It was going to tear through one of the pipes, attach its suckers to his shoulder, and paw at his face with its slimy webbed fingers.

Spencer shuddered. "Stop being a baby," he thought. "It's just a tunnel," he thought. "I can do this," he thought, "I'm not weak, remember?"

He decided to walk to the end of the tunnel to see if there were any ladders and to come right back if there weren't any.

He stepped slowly into the corridor. He bumped into a pile of bricks blocking his path. He used one of the bricks as a doorstop to keep his escape route open.

"No one knows where I am," he thought. "What if neither the guy down the hall or the girl on the Olive Walk remember me? I knew I should have introduced myself!"

He imagined newspaper headlines proclaiming "Boy Genius Disappears From Caltech: Work of the Campus Creeper?"

The Campus Creeper was a serial kidnapper who abducted students from small colleges all over Southern California, drove them out to the desert, and left them there to die of exposure. Two years had passed since the last confirmed abduction, but the Campus Creeper had taken breaks before only to resume his activities years later.

Spencer winced as he recalled the state of his room. There were signs of struggle where he had rolled over piles of boxes and books. There were traces of blood where he had scraped his knee on the carpet. He deeply regretted falling out of bed that morning.

The FBI would get involved, maybe even the profilers from the Behavioral Analysis Unit. They would send search parties into the desert. No one would look in the steam tunnels. Months later, one of the workers from Physical Plant would find the decomposing corpse of Spencer Reid wedged in a crevice between two pipes. Cause of death: Asphyxiation...Spencer stopped himself. Tangents of this type should only be entertained under the mid-day sun.

He journeyed onwards down the corridor.

He stepped over a pipe at knee-height. He ducked under a pipe at chest-height. He tripped over a bundle of cables that crossed his path underfoot.

A wide passage appeared on his right. There were no lights in the passage, but he could make out several elongated shapes leaning against the wall halfway down.

He entered the murky passage, making a beeline for the wall to his left. He tugged at a cobwebbed jumble while holding his breath. The entire collection tumbled down sideways as he freed a long wooden ladder from its grasp. He swung the ladder under his arm and sprinted back into the relative brightness of the pipe-lined tunnel.

Five minutes later, Spencer was in his room propping his ladder against his bed. He grinned, pleased with himself. Problem solved. QED.

He decided to take a cold shower and change into clean clothes. Then, he'd have Cheerios for lunch and read a few books at the campus bookstore. If it was still sweltering hot after dinner, he'd spend the rest of the evening practicing magic tricks in the computer lab.

He clipped a small Maglite onto his keychain. He thought he'd visit the steam tunnels again tomorrow.

The journey back with the ladder had taken all of two minutes. It was a trick of the mind that venturing into unknown territory always seemed to take ten times as long as returning through known territory. The steam tunnels were dark and creepy, and there was always that mutant amphibious creature to keep in the back of one's head, but there was something appealing about them too. Spencer had a lot of free time in the next month. He decided to explore every inch of the steam tunnels before school started in September.

He would be turning thirteen in October. Thirteen was way too old to still be afraid of the dark.

* * *

Nerd speak clarifications

1) Galileo/Jupiter/Comet Shoemaker-Levy

Comet Shoemaker-Levy was a real comet that crashed into Jupiter in July 1994. It was discovered by famous astronomers Carolyn Shoemaker, Eugene Shoemaker, and David Levy at the Palomar Observatory, owned and operated by Caltech in the mountains north of San Diego. The comet broke up under Jupiter's gravitational forces, and the fragments fell into Jupiter's atmosphere, creating many fireballs that were observed by the unmanned Galileo spacecraft, 150 million miles from its rendezvous with Jupiter. Galileo reached Jupiter in December 1995 and continued its glorious mission, making many important discoveries about the Jovian system, until NASA sent it crashing into Jupiter's atmosphere in September 2003. It will be remembered and beloved for as long as its namesake, Galileo Galilei, the most famous astronomer of them all.

2) Steam tunnels

Steam tunnels are underground passageways containing all the pipes, cables, fans, and machines that operate the buildings above. Ladders connect the multiple levels of the steam tunnels. Some of the sections are completely dark. Holes in the wall lead to huge caverns or additional passageways that you can only skooch through on your back. The tunnels extend all over campus, with exits into most of the buildings. They are completely accessible to Caltech students, some of whom prefer to travel through the tunnels exclusively, for fear of seeing the dreaded yellow face of the sun.

3) QED

Quod Erat Demonstrandum, Latin meaning "that which was to be demonstrated". Traditionally written at the end of mathematical proofs. Written by nerds at the end of everything. For example, "I pooped. QED."


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer 1: I do not own Criminal Minds.

Disclaimer 2: I do not own Caltech, although I did go to college there. All characters are fictional, regardless of how much they may resemble actual persons.

Author's Note: The format of this story is unusual. It alternates between 1994-1995 and 2010. I hope the weird format doesn't bother people too much, since I've already got a bunch of chapters written and plan to update regularly. I just need to proofread the chapters before I add them to the story.

Some of the chapters contain quite a lot of nerd speak, but I reserve the right to nerd speak as much as I want in a story about my favorite TV nerds. Nerd speak clarifications may be found at the end of each chapter.

This is my first ever fanfiction. Reading &/ Reviewing are much appreciated. Enjoy!

* * *

Chapter 2

January 2010

"You wanna grab dinner at the Ath afterwards?" asked Reid. He handed Garcia a thumb drive containing their presentation slides.

"Ah, sweet Philosopher, thou knowest thy Goddess doth drool over the gustatory delights of the Athenaeum," replied Garcia. She plugged the thumb drive into the projector, and the title slide of their presentation appeared on the screen at the front of the room.

Gates Lecture Hall was quickly filling up with people. There were professors in plaid button-down shirts and threadbare cardigans. There were students in T-shirts and jeans. Reid snorted on his coffee as he spotted a "Periodic Table and Chairs" T-shirt. He owned the exact same T-shirt depicting the periodic table as a dining table surrounded by dining chairs.

He exited the control room and made his way down the stairs to the front of the lecture hall. He hardly needed his cane anymore. He reminded himself to talk to his doctor about ditching Herbert as soon as he returned to Quantico.

He sat in the first row of seats, waiting for Garcia to finish setting up the audio-visual equipment. Garcia had taken over the control room from the undergrad whose job it was to operate the projector and video camera. Reid and Garcia were here at Caltech to give a lecture on their recent work at the BAU.

The work was unusual for the BAU. It was a mathematical analysis of criminal behavior that reduced anecdotal information into numbers.

Reid had started the project during his first year at the FBI, when he had been Gideon's apprentice and a trainee at the FBI Academy. Back then, he hadn't been allowed to touch ongoing cases, so he had made do digging through records of old cases. He had created his own database of criminal offenders from the information in the records.

Each offender was described by hundreds of variables. An offender received scores for events in the police records - abuses he had committed against others and abuses others had committed against him.

Had a serial arsonist set any fires as a minor? How old had he been when he had set the fires? Had the fires been reported? Had the methods of fire-setting been crude or sophisticated? Had he built any complex incendiary devices? Had he designed any novel incendiary devices? Had he himself ever been a victim of arson?

It was simple - mostly yes-or-no, one-or-zero, answers to very specific questions.

There were also scores for events from the offender's entire life history - sex, birth, death, and everything in between. Reid even included scores for personality traits and psychiatric disorders gleaned from psychological evaluations of offenders in prison.

He used mathematical clustering algorithms to generate groupings of offenders based on hundreds of numerical descriptors.

Some of the groupings coincided with existing categories of criminal behavior. Anger-excitation rapists all clustered together, as did power-reassurance rapists and sexual sadists.

Other groupings formed distinct clusters that stood apart from any existing category. The new clusters represented new profiles - precise mathematical descriptions of the criminal mind that had not yet been recognized in the field of behavioral analysis.

In addition, the algorithms pinpointed the key descriptors that most distinguished one profile from any other profile.

A compulsive need-driven serial arsonist without sexual intent would stand out from the rank-and-file of serial arsonists. She would be 65% more likely to be female. She would set 80% fewer fires, but the fires would be of greater intensity and highly likely to cause fatalities. Her non-fire-setting life would be in shambles. Her compulsions would cost her any semblance of normalcy in school, at work, or in relationships.

Reid had planned to publish his work, but as soon as he had finished his training, Gideon had needed him to work on consults and cases. There was never enough time between the cases, the travel, and the paperwork for him to pursue a major research project. The only spare time he had was during sick leaves in the aftermath of getting kidnapped, anthraxed, or shot.

About a week after getting shot in the knee, Reid had started playing around with his old data again. He was no longer satisfied with publishing papers. Papers were full of mathematical analysis that only a few people would read and even fewer people would understand. He wanted to create something practical that would help save lives in real-time.

He had approached Garcia about writing a computer program to query his data and generate useful results for local police departments. Police departments could input suspect data and crime scene observations and receive the top profiles that matched their information, as well as the top descriptors that composed each profile. They could use the results to target or eliminate potential suspects. The BAU couldn't be everywhere at once, as JJ often lamented.

Three months later, Reid and Garcia had completed the alpha version of the software they had dubbed "Profiler". Hotch had sent it off to several detectives they had worked with in the past. Detective Kim, the lead on the Lila Archer case, had invited Reid and Garcia to the LAPD to train his fellow detectives on the software.

Reid blushed at the thought of Lila Archer. The tabloid with the picture of him and Lila on the cover was still lurking in the depths of his desk. He reminded himself to throw it out as soon as he returned to Quantico. He couldn't risk Morgan finding it...ever.

After their work with the LAPD, Reid and Garcia had planned to fly back to DC, but their flight had been canceled due to a snowstorm in the Mid-Atlantic region. It was the latest in a series of apocalyptic snowstorms that winter.

While waiting out the storm, they had met Dr. Thomas Morley, a computer science professor at Caltech. The three of them had talked up their own storm of nerdiness, complete with flying saliva and hazardous gesticulating, that had frightened children and animals in the airport terminal. It had ended with Professor Morley inviting Reid and Garcia to give a lecture at Caltech.

Reid blinked as the overhead lights dimmed and faded into darkness. At the same time, the spotlights over the nine blackboards flickered to life.

He turned to look in the direction of the control room. He was temporarily blinded by the spotlights and couldn't make out much more than shadowy outlines beyond the first few rows.

He heard a strangled scream from the back of the room. He heard chair cushions snap against backrests as people left their seats. He heard the doors of the lecture hall clank back and forth against their locks.

He smelled something burning in the air. It smelled like almonds.

Reid recognized it as the odor of hydrogen cyanide.

* * *

Garcia let out a strangled scream as she felt a pair of hands clamp down over her throat. The hands were warm and strong where the fingers pressed into her carotid arteries. She struggled to breathe through a constricted windpipe.

The hands released her neck a split second before they squeezed over her elbow, yanking her back from the plexiglas window of the control room. A lurching pain coursed through her shoulder as muscle fibers strained and ruptured. A sharp jab in the back from a knuckled fist sent her reeling into a chair next to the video camera.

In a moment, Garcia found herself handcuffed to the desk in front of the window. She looked up at her attacker.

He was a graying balding man in his mid-fifties who looked just like any of the professors in the lecture hall below. He was short, slightly overweight, and wore a green plaid shirt and khaki pants.

As Garcia watched, the man pulled a small glass vial out of his messenger bag. It was filled with a dark liquid. The needle of a syringe pierced the airtight rubber seal over the opening.

Garcia shrank back into her chair as the man inched towards her. A voice in her head screamed at her to fight - to twist and thrash and kick as hard as she could to keep that man and that needle away from her body. Another voice told her to think. "Think harder!" it screamed.

Garcia had no chance to pay heed to either voice before the man injected a syringeful of the dark red liquid into his own arm.

* * *

Nerd speak clarifications

1) Mathematical clustering

A set of algorithms for assigning objects (like criminals) into groups based on numerical values that describe different properties of the objects. It compares how similar two objects are to each other, based on their numerical descriptors. If enough of the numbers match, the two objects are assigned to the same group. Groupings arise naturally out of the data, so even if the BAU didn't know about an "Anger-Excitation Rapist" category, they would be able to discover it through the clustering process. I don't think the technique has ever been applied to criminals, but I've decided to use it in my fanfiction Never Never Land.

2) Hydrogen cyanide

Toxic gas. Used in state executions and Nazi gas chambers. Smells like burnt almonds. (run for your liiiiiiife!)


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer 1: I do not own Criminal Minds.

Disclaimer 2: I do not own Caltech, although I did go to college there. All characters are fictional, regardless of how much they may resemble actual persons.

Author's Note: The format of this story is unusual. It alternates between 1994-1995 and 2010. I hope the weird format doesn't bother people too much, since I've already got a bunch of chapters written and plan to update regularly. I just need to proofread the chapters before I add them to the story.

Some of the chapters contain quite a bit of nerd speak, but I reserve the right to nerd speak as much as I want in a story about my favorite TV nerds. Nerd speak clarifications may be found at the end of each chapter.

This is my first ever fanfiction. Reading &/ Reviewing are much appreciated. Enjoy!

* * *

Chapter 3

September 1994

"Row faster!" demanded Eric.

"No, not that way!" shouted Keith.

"We're tipping over!" cried Sarah.

Spencer remained silent, clutching his paddle in one hand and gripping the side of the canoe in the other.

The canoe tipped halfway over as it turned in the heaving waves. The distressed seafarers struggled to stabilize it and point the bow back towards shore. They rowed desperately, wielding their flimsy paddles in white-knuckled hands, as the ocean threatened to suck their tiny craft into its opaque waters.

Apparently, the collective brainpower of four Caltech freshmen was insufficient for the operation of a canoe in the Pacific Ocean.

No one on Catalina Island noticed the drama unfolding offshore. Spencer saw figures sitting on the sand, figures hiking up the trail north of the beach, figures on the summit of the peak at the end of the trail, but none of the figures seemed at all interested in them.

"Being able to see human figures is a good sign," he thought, "It means we're not that far from shore. It only feels that way, because we've been drifting out to sea and turning in circles for the past hour."

He breathed more calmly as the canoe responded to their concerted efforts. It glided smoothly into the ring of shallow water surrounding the island. It closed in on the long wooden dock that jutted out from the beach.

Spencer sighed as he realized that his Caltech career was destined to last beyond Freshman Orientation.

The Two Harbors Express had barely off-loaded its animate and inanimate cargo before several of the overly animated had become embroiled in this crisis of their own making. Exactly why Spencer Reid and his hallmates from Ricketts House needed to hop aboard a vessel of questionable seaworthiness immediately after disembarking from a vastly superior vessel was clear to none involved. Spencer rationalized it as the lure of the sea.

An amused snort escaped his nose as he stepped out of the boat and helped his co-conspirators drag it up the beach. He straightened to see Sarah, his next-door neighbor, laughing uncontrollably, tears filling her brown eyes. Eric and Keith, roommates from across the hall, cackled loudly on the ground beside the canoe.

"Did you hear about the guy who tried to scale that cliff with his bare hands last year?" asked Keith, pointing at the five-hundred-foot cliff that rose from the southern end of Fox Landing.

"Yeah, he got stuck halfway up and had to be rescued by helicopter. That could have been us," replied Eric.

"The YMCA almost banned us from the camp last year," said Keith, "Imagine if they had to call Search-and-Rescue again this year."

"The Dean had to make promises so they'd let us come back. That's why there are Out-of-Bounds signs next to all the cliffs now," said Sarah.

"And on all the trails too," said Spencer, "I saw them from the boat while we were rowing in."

"You can see signs on top of Bible Peak from out in the ocean?" asked Sarah.

"Yeah, with this," Spencer replied, pulling a tiny spyglass out of his pocket. "The signs are orange so they really stand out against the trail. It's like looking for a needle in a haystack," he added.

Three pairs of eyebrows hung in mid-air as Spencer stuffed the spyglass back into his pocket.

"So, think anyone would have noticed if the four of us had disappeared into the ocean?" asked Keith.

"Did you know that dolphins have been reported to help humans lost at sea? They'll guide or carry people to shore, and even defend people against sharks. Some of the stories are fishermen's legends, and others are dehydration-induced hallucinations, but there are confirmed reports of rescuers arriving to find lost divers surrounded by dolphins," said Spencer, without pausing for breath.

"Maybe the dolphins thought the human was one of them," said Sarah.

"Actually," said Spencer, "Since humans are neither predator or prey from the dolphins' perspective, they may just be exercising a natural protective instinct for other living things."

"Maybe they're not as altruistic as you think. I heard that some dolphins at Sea World have tried to have sex with their human trainers," offered Eric. "Imagine having sex with a fish," he mused.

"Yeah, I'm sure you would know all about it," said Sarah, "By the way, dolphins are mammals, not fish."

"I'm a physics major," Eric explained.

"Was that why the Dean was so excited about the dolphins on the way over?" asked Keith, not bothering to acknowledge Eric's lame excuse.

"And the flying feeeeeeesh?" added Sarah. She imitated the thick French accent of the Dean, who had spent the entire two-hour ferry trip from Long Beach pointing out every single dolphin and flying fish that leaped out of the water.

Spencer made fake vomiting noises.

"For shame, perverts! Young ears present!" said Keith, gesturing in Spencer's direction. "Come on, Spender, let's get out of here. You can try to block out this whole conversation during dinner. I hear that you're the guest of honor tonight. The Dean is starving. He's been waiting decades to feed on another one like you. The rest of us are too old. Apparently, we're stringy, and we taste funny."

Spencer launched a fistful of sand in Keith's direction, not a grain of it hitting his friend as the wind blew it back into his own face.

For unknown reasons, everyone he met here called him "Spender" instead of his real name. Did he resemble the character "Spender" from Ray Bradbury's novel "The Martian Chronicles" - the one who went ballistic as soon as the Earthmen touched down on Mars and started murdering his crewmates one by one?

He didn't care if he did. He liked his new nickname. He liked his new friends even better.

At Caltech, Spencer Reid was just another nerd in a sea of nerds, each with his or her own brand of nerdiness, free to revel in a world created just for them away from the exasperated eyes of the world outside. This was one place where no one would ever dream of ganging up on a little kid at school and tying him to a goalpost over the football field.

* * *

Penelope watched in slow motion horror as the twenty-inch pizza she was carrying slid off its platter and landed on a boy sitting at the dining table nearby.

"Oh my God, I am so sorry! Are you OK?" she gasped.

The boy jumped out of his chair, his head and shoulders obscured by dangling slices of pepperoni pizza. Two freshmen sitting next to him stood up and began clearing pizza off his face while he removed a pair of thick glasses and wiped them on his shirt-tail.

Penelope felt terrible. The boy looked like a professor's kid who had come along with his mom or dad for a fun weekend on Catalina Island. Now, he would have to spend the next month applying aloe to the second degree burns on his face.

She resisted an urge to sob. She didn't want to lose it here, in front of the entire freshman class.

"I'll go get some paper towels," she said, grasping at a chance to escape the commotion.

She weaved her way past the dining tables into the kitchen. Her eyes watered with angry tears. Her fingers twitched with the impulse to hurl a stack of plates against the wall.

As an aide for Freshman Orientation, all she had to do was wait a few tables at dinner and unload a few bags from the ferry, and she couldn't even perform those menial tasks correctly. Earlier that day, she had dropped a poor freshman's brown leather messenger bag into the water next to the dock. Thankfully, she had been able to fish it out by the strap before it had sunk to the bottom of the ocean. Now, she had just dumped a burning hot pizza on a poor little boy who wasn't even a student.

The boy followed her into the kitchen.

"Why don't you go back to dinner?" Penelope suggested. "They'll run out of edible food if you hang around here. I'll bring you some paper towels."

She looked around the kitchen without seeing a single scrap of paper to give the boy.

She wondered about the boy's parents. Who were they? Did she know them? Had she taken one of their classes? Why hadn't they come to save him right away?

"Maybe he doesn't have any parents," she thought, "Maybe he's just like me."

Penelope felt a soreness at the tip of her nose. She stooped down and pretended to look for paper towels in the lower cabinets.

She hated her new habit of tearing up at every little incident that crossed her path. It didn't fit her, but she couldn't help it. It was a physical reflex triggered by any number of stressors. It drove her away from people, even her closest friends. She didn't want anyone to see her cry. She wanted to curl up alone in her weakest moments. But there was nowhere to hide when every moment threatened to become a weakest moment, ever since that awful day in August when her parents had been killed in a car accident on the 110 Freeway.

"They had been driving to visit me," she thought. "It's all my fault. This wasn't supposed to happen. I should've gone home for the summer like a normal person instead of hanging around JPL pretending to be Little Miss Genius Researcher Girl!"

"It's not that bad," said the boy, his squeaky voice jolting Penelope out of her self-loathing reverie.

For a moment, she had been afraid that his comment was directed towards her internal dialogue. There was no way she could handle cross-examination by a juvenile psychic at this stage of her life.

She recovered and nodded in agreement. The hot cheesy center of the pizza had hit him in the back of the head, where his thick mop of light brown curls had shielded him from its worst effects.

"Muppet hair did have certain advantages," thought Penelope, "Even if it made grown men look like girls and pre-pubescent boys look even more like girls."

It was the hairstyle of choice for an unusually high number of male undergrads at Caltech. Penelope suspected that it was the result of being too lazy to get a haircut.

The boy brightened as he spotted a large deep sink in one corner of the kitchen. He jogged over to it, turned on the faucet, and ducked his head under the running water. The water washed shreds of cheese and rivulets of tomato sauce down the drain.

The boy extracted an intact pepperoni slice from his hair, holding it up to show Penelope. He made it appear and disappear in his fingers.

Penelope couldn't help laughing at the antics of the boy. She noticed a bunch of napkins stuffed into her apron pocket and placed them on the counter next to the sink. She snuck out the back door while the boy dried his face and hair.

* * *

Spencer opened his bag to find the bottom drowned in two inches of seawater. He ripped out the top layer of underwear and shirts and searched for what he wanted in the pool at the bottom.

"You should hang those up," advised Eric, pointing at the wad of wet clothing, "They'll probably dry overnight."

Spencer nodded, but continued digging through his bag.

He pulled out a 7x7x7 Rubik's Cube. Eric snickered knowingly.

He pulled out a soft velvet pouch that clicked with the sound of dice within. Eric's eyes lit up.

He pulled out a delicate figurine of a knight wearing a long red cape. Eric examined it under the light.

He pulled out a little black notebook and a set of colored pencils. "You draw?" asked Eric. "I just doodle when I'm bored," Spencer replied shyly, as Eric thumbed through the wet pages.

At last, Spencer found what he was looking for. He opened a Ziploc bag full of candy and held it out to the other five occupants of the cabin.

"Bless you, little one," said a huge bearded man in the bunk across from Spencer. He looked thirty, even though he was a freshman and no older than eighteen.

Each of Spencer's roommates grabbed a Twix bar, a Rice Krispies treat, or a package of Gummi Bears from the supply of candy that Spencer carried around in his bag at all times.

"Thanks, Spender," said Eric. "What was that stuff they were trying to feed us for dinner?" he asked the room.

"Vomit Patties in Shit Sauce," someone said.

"I believe the official designation is Salisbury Steak," said another.

"Our table was supposed to get pizza, but Spender sucked it into the supermassive black hole around his head," said Eric. "Then, he had some kind of tryst with the waiter girl in the kitchen. Why couldn't she have dumped pizza on my head?" he lamented.

Spencer shoved a candy wrapper down the back of Eric's shirt before climbing into bed. He took a bite of his Twix bar and let his mind wander over the events of the day. The wandering blocked out the voices of his roommates. He never heard them discussing the demerits of college cafeteria food or arguing over whether "Vomit Patties in Shit Sauce" or "Shit Patties in Vomit Sauce" was a more appropriate apellation for Salisbury Steak.

Spencer's brain sucked up the glucose from the Twix bar, ripped the molecules apart, and burned the fragments for fuel. It needed energy to power its higher functions.

While Spencer slept, his brain flexed the synapses between innumerable pairs of neurons. It printed the images of the day deep into his eidetic memory. Long-term potentiation, the brain reminded itself, responsible for such processes as learning, memory, cognition, addiction.

The images crouched in their little cubbyholes, waiting for the time when they would be recalled to life.

* * *

Penelope rolled off her mattress and skooched it a few feet up the beach. She didn't want the rising tide to wash her out to sea.

She looked up at the clear night sky as she lay back down. The sky regaled her with the sight of thousands of stars, more stars than she had ever seen in any other night sky. She vaguely remembered being interested in stars.

She closed her eyes and waited for the drifting feeling that signaled respite from the day. Everything faded from her senses - the voices of people, the crackling of the fire, the lapping of waves against the shore.

While Penelope slept, her brain searched for inputs from the external world. Finding none, it turned to its own devices. It lifted the latches on the little cubbyholes where her memories crouched in wait. The images swirled gleefully in their new-found freedom.

They came to Penelope as if for the very first time. Each image was different but much the same - her parents, young again, slipping little boots over little feet that ached to run out into the snow, passing out sprigs of cotton candy to little hands that reached for them, smiling and clapping as a little face bowed demurely over the silky skirt of a pink tutu.

Each dream seemed to last for hours, and so would its memory after the dreamer awakened. The memory of a dream and the dream of a memory, one upon the other, flooding Penelope with a sadness that dampened every waking hour.

* * *

Nerd speak clarifications

1) Freshman Orientation

Wherein Caltech freshmen are whisked off to a fantasy island to be brain-washed by crazy upperclassmen and professors. Used to take place on Catalina Island, at a YMCA camp near the hamlet of Two Harbors. Freshmen would make friends with each other and learn about Caltech rules and traditions. Rules? What rules?

Activities included hiking, boating (and boating accidents), sleeping on the beach, and setting perfectly legal fires. The cliff-climbing/helicopter rescue incident did happen one year. The drifting out to sea canoe incident was a regular occurrence. The author crashed a kayak into a cliff within 30 minutes of arriving on the island. I think Caltech was eventually banned from the island, because Freshman Orientation was moved to a camp in the mountains north of LA.

2) Glucose/Brain

Glucose is sugar, the main energy supply for the body. Food, especially carbs, gets broken down into glucose. The brain is the biggest consumer of glucose. It composes 2% of the body's weight, but sucks up 25% of the body's glucose.

3) Long-term potentiation

A process by which the brain stores information. Appears to involve strengthening the connections (synapses) between specific pairs of brain cells (neurons). A definite contributor to learning and memory. A less definite contributor to cognition and addiction, but there is scientific evidence for both.


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer 1: I do not own Criminal Minds.

Disclaimer 2: I do not own Caltech, although I did go to college there. All characters are fictional, regardless of how much they may resemble actual persons.

Author's Note: The format of this story is unusual. It alternates between 1994-1995 and 2010. I hope the weird format doesn't bother people too much, since I've already got a bunch of chapters written and plan to update regularly. I just need to proofread the chapters before I add them to the story.

Some of the chapters contain quite a bit of nerd speak, but I reserve the right to nerd speak as much as I want in a story about my favorite TV nerds. Nerd speak clarifications may be found at the end of each chapter.

This is my first ever fanfiction. Reading &/ Reviewing are much appreciated. Enjoy!

* * *

Chapter 4

January 2010

"Hydroxocobalamin," said the UnSub, "A member of the vitamin B12 family, composed of cobalt(I) in an octahedral coordination complex with six ligands - the four nitrogens of a large corrin ring, the one nitrogen of a small benzimidazole ring, and a lone hydroxide ion. Hydroxide ion can be displaced by cyanide ion, converting hydroxocobalamin into cyanocobalamin, another member of the vitamin B12 family. The process sequesters cyanide away from the heme centers of Complex IV, preventing the shutdown of the electron transport chain and the asphyxiation of tissues and organs from within."

He spoke the words not to Garcia, but to the vial of dark red liquid. He shook it in the light of the computer screen. His words all ran together, as if he were reciting them out of a textbook.

Garcia felt fear, then desire. She longed to hold the vial in her own hands.

The UnSub held his finger over his lips in a signal to remain silent. He sat down at the desk and clicked around on the computer screen for a few seconds. The title slide of Reid and Garcia's presentation disappeared from the screen at the front of the room, replaced by a view of the computer desktop with its cursor, icons, and wallpaper.

Embedded in the wallpaper was a counter displaying the concentration of cyanide gas in the room. It read 25 ppm. There was a blank space for a third digit on the leftmost side.

The UnSub leaned back in his chair, making no move to communicate further with the occupants of the lecture hall.

Garcia heard muffled commotion from the room below. She couldn't see into the lecture hall from her position, handcuffed to the side of the desk facing away from the window.

The UnSub frowned as the commotion intensified. He clicked something on the computer screen, which Garcia also couldn't see, and the commotion dropped off, replaced by stunned silence.

The last digit of the cyanide counter scrolled up a few times before coming to rest at 0. The middle digit scrolled up once. The concentration of cyanide gas was now 30 ppm. Garcia saw it reflected in the UnSub's glasses. She didn't know what the number implied.

"Reid!" she remembered, "He would know!"

* * *

Reid took a bite of his Twix bar. He chewed, swallowed, took another bite, chewed again, swallowed again. He tore open the shiny blue wrapper of a Rice Krispies treat and devoured the sticky sweet chunk within. He popped Gummi Bear after Gummi Bear into his mouth. He waited for three packets of sugar to dissolve on his tongue.

He was now ready to profile the UnSub. After he profiled the UnSub, he would profile Penelope Garcia. Then, they would all walk out of here together, no one would get hurt, and he would apologize to Garcia for sucking her into one of the deadly vortices that the universe devised for and unleashed upon him on an annual basis.

The glucose from the Twix bar made its way into his bloodstream, then into his cells. The molecules of glucose encountered molecules of cyanide in the aqueous medium of his body. They reacted to produce a jumble of useless harmless chemicals. The celullar concentration of cyanide plummeted below the threshold needed to derail the electron transport chain. The cells continued to rip apart molecules of glucose, collecting electrons from the fragments as they ricocheted through the citric acid cycle. The cytochrome a3 heme of Complex IV continued to accept electrons passed to it from the cytochrome a heme, reducing molecules of oxygen to molecules of water and building up the electrical potential across the mitochondrial membrane. The electrical potential continued to drive the flux of protons through the transmembrane ion channel of ATP synthase, causing the gamma subunit of the protein to rotate within a well surrounded by the catalytic binding sites of the F1 subunit. The molecular rotor continued to induce conformational changes in the catalytic binding sites, lengthening molecules of adenosine diphosphate into molecules of adenosine triphosphate. The molecules of ATP continued to sacrifice their terminal phosphate groups, powering the primitive and non-primitive functions of Spencer Reid's brain.

Cyanide gas continued to diffuse into the room. As the counter scrolled up to 35 ppm, Reid's brain switched into the mode that it adopted under intense terror. That was when it did its best work.

It sped down aisles and aisles of cubbyholes, wrenching them open to release the images within. Chemical structures danced in the air, accompanied by chemical equations, mathematical equations, curves on a graph - some continuous and elegant, others jagged and messy. Reid swatted them away with a sideways glance.

They were replaced by words that lined up in a row, hovering obediently where Reid placed them along the top of his field of view.

A row of numbers appeared beneath the row of words. It was a row of data from his database of criminal offenders. It was so long that it trailed off the edge of the canvas.

Reid shifted his eyes into the distance, and the row of numbers followed him to the back of the room. He scanned through the numbers, picking out a handful of the ones he wanted to keep and tacking them up on the plexiglas window of the control room.

The letters and numbers that described the UnSub glittered bluish white against a black background. Reid scored them as a 10 on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness, like diamond. Diamond was the hardest naturally occurring material, but there existed synthetic materials harder than diamond, and Reid aimed to become one of these over the next few minutes. He aimed to scrape away at the UnSub, gouging him with his own hard edges, leaving him an ugly hunk of rock in the face of superior materials.

Once robbed of his luster, the UnSub would have to choose - fight or flight. The cyanide counter would scroll up in measured increments, or it would scroll up in a dizzying stall. The two hundred students and professors in the lecture hall would live, or they would die.

Reid cringed in doubt. He was not Gideon. He was only accustomed to gambling with his own life.

What the UnSub really needed, what all the UnSubs really needed, was a chance to be melted down - crystal structure dismantled, bonds snapped apart, atoms unchained from their geometric prison. Add a few elements to the mixture, fiddle with the proportions, and a different structure would re-crystallize from the molten liquor.

At the moment, Reid didn't have time to play with his chemistry set. He needed to impose his will upon the UnSub before the cyanide counter displayed its third digit. He needed to nudge the ugly hunk of rock into a harmless orbit rather than a cataclysmic freefall. If there were time later, the hunk of rock could be melted down and allowed to crystallize anew.

The wave of doubt swept over him again. He felt cold and alone. He wanted to exit the lecture hall. He imagined himself curling up in a soft warm blanket with a cup of coffee and one of his favorite zombie movies on the TV screen.

He swallowed into a dry throat and told himself to suck it up. He had a profile, a gun, a plan, and a helper. He turned his attention to Penelope Garcia.

Her name appeared in wispy letters at the bottom of his field of view. A reel played itself over and over beneath the letters. In it, he watched the skinny figure of a teenage girl - her blonde ponytail swinging behind her back, apron strings tied around her waist - retreating out the back door of the kitchen at Camp Fox. The reel was blurry, having been recorded many years ago through the film of a wet paper napkin over his face.

Reid profiled the girl he knew then and the woman he knew today. The letters and numbers that described Penelope Garcia glowed multi-colored against a white background.

He remembered a promise he had made to her years and years ago. They would have to fulfill it together. It was his duty as her noblest Knight, and it was her duty as Princess of her domain.

Letters and numbers clattered to the floor as Reid shifted his focus back to the lecture hall - rows of seats, hunched figures, frightened faces, wide eyes. The eyes fixated upon his name and credentials written in white chalk upon a pristine blackboard:

"Dr. Spencer Reid, B.S. Caltech 1998, Ph.D. Caltech 1999, 2000, 2002."

"Supervisory Special Agent, Behavioral Analysis Unit, FBI."

Reid lifted his cane and pointed it at the plexiglas window of the control room. He opened his mouth to speak.

* * *

The UnSub slapped Garcia hard across the face as she tried to speak to him. Garcia let her cheek throb away on its own while she reconsidered her options.

She didn't try to profile the Unsub, because she didn't have the knowledge. She didn't try to profile Reid, because she didn't have the right.

The soreness she felt at the tip of her nose disappeared in a few sniffles and blinks. It was a physical reflex triggered by the unexpected blow. With nothing to feed it, the reflex was easily smothered.

Garcia recalled a time in her life when it had not been so easily smothered. She closed her eyes and played a reel in her head. The reel was sharp and vibrant, having been created many years ago through the lens of her imagination.

She opened her eyes to banish the unwelcome frames. They were replaced by lines of code that scrolled up, down, and sideways off the edge of the canvas. The lines of code were beautiful with their predictable patterns of indents, parentheses, brackets, braces, and semicolons. Garcia was grateful to them, because they had always been there for her, there to smother all sensation in the aftermath of her personal tragedies.

Coding had worked, then hacking, but when those cold intellectual pursuits had failed, something else had always stepped in to fill the void. She had never been alone, as she was now alone with the UnSub and the upwards scrolling of the cyanide counter, with neither a profile or a gun to bring into battle.

"Reid!" she remembered, "He has both!"

Garcia did not store as many images and reels in her head as Reid did, nor did she entice them out of their cubbyholes as quickly as Reid did. She recalled information as the simple process of knowing.

She remembered a promise he had made to her years and years ago. They would have to fulfill it together. It was her duty as Princess of her domain, and it was his duty as her noblest Knight.

Garcia looked up from her lap as she heard Reid's voice ring out across the lecture hall. It came out strong and clear through the microphone clipped to his shirt collar.

"Doctor," he addressed the UnSub.

* * *

Nerd speak clarifications

1) Hydroxocobalamin

An antidote for cyanide poisoning. Cyanide binds to metal atoms, disrupting the energy-generating pathways (metabolism) of every single cell in the body. With hydroxocobalamin, cyanide binds to the metal atom of the antidote instead of the metal atoms in the cellular machinery, so the cellular machinery can keep chugging along, producing energy for the cell. Otherwise, the cell will asphyxiate and die.

2) 25 ppm

Parts per million, a measure of concentration of a substance. For every 1 million molecules in the air, 25 of the molecules are hydrogen cyanide. Cyanide is detectable by smell at a concentration of less than 1 ppm.

3) Reid's candy-eating binge

Candy is full of sugar, or glucose. Glucose is a molecule that reacts with cyanide, converting cyanide into non-cyanide substances. It plays the same role as hydroxocobalamin, but a lot less effectively, so it is not considered an antidote for cyanide poisoning. In this case, I've decided that Reid's sugar addiction is going to protect him from the effects of cyanide poisoning long enough for him to save everyone in the lecture hall.

In metabolism, molecules of glucose are broken down to generate molecules of ATP in a complicated process as described in the chapter. ATP is the energy source for the cell. For every cellular process that requires energy, ATP gets broken down, so the cell needs a constant supply of glucose to generate more molecules of ATP. The mechanism is described in detail because the author believes that this is the way Reid thinks.

4) Mohs scale of mineral hardness

The Mohs scale is a scale from 1 to 10 that measures the hardness of materials. One material is considered harder than another if it can scratch the surface of the other material. Diamond, at 10, is the hardest naturally occurring material, followed by ruby (9), sapphire (9), and topaz (8). Diamond knives are used in laboratories to cut all kinds of things.

5) Coding

Coding is a term for "computer programming", used by coders to describe themselves. Lines of code contain a set of pre-defined words and punctuation marks scrolling every which way in a text editor. The author finds them just as beautiful as Garcia does. (snort, snort)


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer 1: I do not own Criminal Minds.

Disclaimer 2: I do not own Caltech, although I did go to college there. All characters are fictional, regardless of how much they may resemble actual persons.

Author's Note: The format of this story is unusual. It alternates between 1994-1995 and 2010. I hope the weird format doesn't bother people too much, since I've already got a bunch of chapters written and plan to update regularly. I just need to proofread the chapters before I add them to the story.

Some of the chapters contain quite a bit of nerd speak, but I reserve the right to nerd speak as much as I want in a story about my favorite TV nerds. Nerd speak clarifications may be found at the end of each chapter.

This is my first ever fanfiction. Reading &/ Reviewing are much appreciated. Enjoy!

* * *

Chapter 5

October 1994

Penelope surveyed her new domain with satisfaction. "Christmas lights really do brighten up a room," she thought.

She leaned back in her swivel chair, testing the angle of the backrest and the height of the seat. It always took awhile to get a swivel chair back to the way she liked it, especially after it had been taken apart and put back together.

From her desk, she could see the edge of a long wooden bench against the metal railing of the second floor. She had built the bench herself from the reconfigured fragments of a pallet, courtesy of the dumpsters behind Physical Plant. She had painted them bright orange and nailed them together to form a serviceable kitchen counter. On the counter sat a hot plate, a microwave, a toaster oven, and a set of cooking and eating utensils neatly laid out on colorful trays.

A mini-fridge hummed beneath the counter. "That had been a major pain to get down here," she thought.

On the far side of the second floor, away from the railing, was a bedframe without a mattress. Next to it was a row of bedside tables made from small wooden spools, also courtesy of the dumpsters behind Physical Plant. A rug extended from the foot of the bed to the bathroom door. A cluster of baskets held Penelope's favorite clothes next to a hamper for dirty laundry. The rest of her belongings were stored in cardboard boxes on the third and fourth floors of her new home.

The only thing left to do was to retrieve her mattress from the storage shed behind Dabney House.

Penelope had moved out of her room in Dabney House a few days ago, after telling her brothers that she had taken a leave of absence from Caltech to work at the Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea. They had sounded so happy for her on the phone.

"The change of scenery will do you good," Josh had said, "I always feel like a new person every time I arrive in a new place." Josh was a professional photographer for National Geographic.

"How come my school never sends me to Hawaii?" Marcos had asked, "I'd be happy to extract and transport poop all day if I were in Hawaii." Marcos was a medical student at UCSF.

"You're too much of a nerd to appreciate the delights of a tropical paradise," Jonathan had teased, with Alejandro snorting in the background. Penelope thought her younger brothers were way too old to still snort at her every time they talked to her on the phone, but she didn't begrudge them a little bit of fun at her expense. They were having a tough time of it, having been forced to leave their school and friends behind to live with Rick's unmarried older brother in Sacramento. It helped that they were best friends as well as step-brothers.

Penelope wished that she had a doppelgaenger to partake of her daily angst, but she couldn't imagine any doppelgaenger wishing to spend time with her in this dark little hole in the ground. In reality, she had taken a leave of absence only to escape, to curl up alone, to engage in purely intellectual pursuits without the emotional clutter of the sun-lit world above. There was so much clutter up there - emotional, visual, auditory. She didn't enjoy any of it anymore.

Lying to her brothers was the only thing that bothered Penelope about her new existence. She hated to do it, but she counted on them to forgive her when she emerged from this hole in the ground. One day, she would be well and whole and herself again.

She twisted her fingers around a bundle of bungee cords in her lap. At the moment, she had more pressing matters to worry about. How was she going to maneuver a mattress down a four-story ladder all by herself?

* * *

Spencer saw the unlit headlights of the Daihatsu just in time to swerve his bike out of their trajectory. The golf cart screeched to a halt on the cobblestone path along Millikan Pond. The bike journeyed onwards, its biker hanging on by one hand and zero feet as the watery surface that had occupied his peripheral vision tilted up to occupy his central vision.

Spencer splashed up to a half-standing position, coughing and sputtering with his hands on his knees. He ploughed through the cold water, searching for the glasses had been ejected from his face a split second before he and his bike had been ejected from the path.

"Oh my God, I am so sorry! Are you OK?" screamed a high-pitched voice behind him. The voice was momentarily blocked out by the sound of splashing as its owner joined him in the pond.

"Yeah, I'm fine," replied Spencer, "I just can't find my glasses!" he added desperately.

"Don't worry, I'll help you look for them," said the voice.

A circle of light flooded Spencer's face as he was temporarily blinded by the beam of a flashlight pointed directly at him.

"Oops, sorry!"

The circle of light bounced away from his face and began sweeping itself over the surface of the pond.

"Stop, stop!" screamed Spencer. "Right there! A few inches to the left!"

The beam wavered and stopped over the spot he indicated. He squinted at a black outline in the water. He slid underwater onto his stomach and stretched out his arm to retrieve his glasses from the base of the sculpture in the middle of Millikan Pond.

"Watch out!" yelled the girl, as Spencer poked his head out of the water.

One of the metal fins of the sculpture whizzed by microns over his head and continued its revolutions around a central tower. "No wonder everyone called it the 'Spinning Blades of Death'", he thought.

Spencer splashed his way out of the water before any further mishap could befall him. The mutant amphibious creature that lived in the steam tunnels probably visited Millikan Pond to spawn its blood-sucking offspring on moonless fall nights like this one.

The girl climbed up onto the walkway beside him, holding out his dripping bike.

"Sorry about all this," she said, waving her arms to encompass the mayhem. "I was in a hurry. It was dark. I didn't see you..."

Her voice trailed off as she watched him put his glasses back on. The glasses fit perfectly over his left eye, but dangled haphazardly over his right eye, where the screw holding the arm to the frame had come loose in the fall.

Spencer sighed. He owned several pairs of frames that fit his lenses, but these particular black horn-rimmed frames were his favorite. His mother had gotten them for his ninth birthday, along with a huge Celestron telescope and a tiny old-fashioned spyglass. It was the last birthday he had celebrated with both of his parents, and he didn't want any part of it marred by anything that happened anytime afterwards.

"Um, if you come with me, I can fix those for you," said the girl in an uncertain voice. "I'm just on my way over to Arms," she said, pointing towards the geology building on the far side of Millikan Library.

"Do you have a screw for glasses?" asked Spencer.

"I have every kind of screw under the sun!" she said brightly. She frowned, realizing the connotations of her outburst. Spencer climbed onto his bike without noticing anything out of the ordinary.

He followed the golf cart to the entrance of Arms Laboratory. There was some kind of large folded-up object in the back.

The girl unlocked the door of the building with her master key, and they tiptoed into the deserted hallway. Their vehicles stood abandoned on the walkway outside. It was 1:30 AM.

"Right this way," said the girl, pointing to an elevator behind a set of sliding metal bars.

The elevator looked more like a birdcage than a load-bearing conveyance. Spencer stepped in and silently recited the number of elevator-related deaths per year, not to mention the number of injuries that required hospitalization.

The elevator rumbled down past the ground floor, the basement, the sub-basement, and the sub-sub-basement. It jerked to a halt at the bottom of its shaft, and the girl pried the door open with her fingers.

Spencer had explored most of campus, including every inch of the steam tunnels that was not bugged with motion detectors, but he had never visited the sub-sub-basement of the geology building before.

"Do you work here?" he asked the girl.

"Um, sort of," she replied, "Down there," she added, unlocking and opening a door hidden in a nook of the hallway.

It opened onto a metal ladder that descended into a bottomless pit of darkness.

Spencer backed away from the entrance. He really didn't want to go down there.

"I'll go down first and get the lights," said the girl. She turned on her flashlight, positioned it in her pocket with the beam pointing up, and began climbing down the ladder into the pit.

"It's OK," said Spencer, "I'll be right behind you."

The girl was obviously comfortable climbing into the pit, and he wasn't about to be a scaredy-cat if she was so nonchalant about it. Besides, he didn't want to climb down that ladder alone, light or no light.

* * *

"Wow!" Spencer gasped, taking in the scenery that greeted him the bottom of the pit.

Christmas lights adorned every wall and railing in the tall narrow shaft. The ten-foot by fifteen-foot space at the bottom held a computer desk, a swivel chair, a beanbag chair, and several bookcases filled with paperbacks and comics. A whiteboard covered an entire wall behind the desk. Knick-knacks - snowglobes, music boxes, lava lamps, paper flowers, fuzzy pens - covered every other surface. An impressive collection of stuffed animals lined a four-foot high ledge opposite the whiteboard. Figurines of dragons, wizards, and elves joined them on wooden planks that protected them from the rough surface of the ledge. A sparkly model of the Solar System dangled from a clothesline that ran between the third floor railing and the opposite wall. A model of the Milky Way glowed above it, between the wall and the fourth floor railing.

It was the most welcoming four-story pit that Spencer Reid had ever laid eyes on.

"They built this pit to discover something or other that got discovered by someone else before they finished it," said the girl. "There's a landing on each story above this one. I sleep up there," she pointed at the second floor railing. "There's even a bathroom," she added.

"You live here too?" asked Spencer.

"Um, kind of, it's like my own little domain," she said.

"Oh...This is super cool!" he exclaimed.

"By the way, my name is Spen..." he tried to introduce himself, but the girl shushed him with a finger over her lips. He looked to each side, then up and down, expecting to see the mutant amphibious creature ooze out of a crack in the bricks.

"No, no, no, I don't need to know your name or anything else about you," she said. "Here, in my domain, I shall bestow new names and occupations upon my honored guests."

"I am Princess Grendelin," she said, pointing at herself. "And you..." she paused, eyeing Spencer from head to toe, "You shall be Sir Rubik, Rube for short," she finished, pointing at the miniature Rubik's cube that dangled from Spencer's keychain.

"Kneel," she continued.

"Kneel?"

"Indeed, dear Sir, you must be officially ordained by the Princess."

He knelt, and she tapped him once on the head and once on each shoulder with a neon glowstick.

"I, Princess Grendelin, ruler of my domain, do anoint thee Sir Rubik, Rube for short, and henceforth shall thee by these noble names be known," she spoke in regal tones.

"And I, Sir Rubik, Rube for short, do swear to protect and defend thy domain and thyself, dear Princess, from all who dare trespass against thee, even unto the grave," he replied, matching her tone.

"Sir Rubik, may I have the honor of fixing your glasses?" asked the Princess.

"Certainly, Your Majesty," replied Sir Rubik, bowing with a flourish and handing over his glasses.

"And after I have finished fixing your glasses, dear Rube, would you mind helping me move my mattress down here? It awaits upon my mighty steed outside."

"Think nothing of it, dear Princess, Rube is at your every beck and call."

Princess Grendelin and Sir Rubik smiled at each other as the Princess began rummaging through a toolbox, looking for the perfect screw to restore the fine accoutrements of her noblest Knight.

* * *

Spencer pinched himself in the arm to make sure that he was not dreaming as he entered his room in Ricketts House.

Had he really met a girl a who lived in a four-story pit in the geology building? Had she really called herself Princess of her domain and him her noblest Knight? Had he really helped her lower a mattress down a four-story ladder? Had she really given him a gift of a princess figurine wearing a long pointy hat? Had he really kissed her chivalrously on the hand before leaving?

The girl looked familiar, but he couldn't quite place her. He had never seen anyone with blue- and pink-streaked pigtails or red-rimmed glasses with fake furry eyelashes poking up over the frames.

He took the princess figurine out of his pocket and placed it on his bookshelf, next to the knight in the long red cape. They looked so comfortable together in the light of his desk lamp.

In his imagination, the Princess twirled as the Knight lifted her onto a large white cloud. The Knight was a magician as well as a knight. He could conjure up puffy multi-colored clouds with a wave of his wand, but the clouds would not fly unless the Princess was there to ride upon them.

Spencer pinched himself again. The imaginary reels were sharp and vibrant. The line between reality and illusion was beginning to blur.

"Hey, Spender," said a voice from the open doorway, "Have you done your Chem 3 pre-lab yet?"

Spencer turned to see Rebecca, his next-door neighbor, tapping at the cover of her lab notebook. Sarah, his next-door neighbor on the other side, peeked in behind Rebecca, twiddling her pen at lightning speed over her fingers.

Spencer groaned and banged his head against the bedpost. He had forgotten about the pre-lab, and it was now 2:30 AM. He had to get up early for Chem 3 at 7:00 AM.

Chem 3 was the freshman chemistry lab that was required for graduation from Caltech, regardless of major. Spencer didn't mind it, because he was a chemistry major, but running around in a chaotic laboratory at 7:00 AM with a bunch of math and physics majors who were both 90% asleep and 100% incompetent was a disaster waiting to happen. Who knew when one of them would accidentally mix the wrong chemicals together and blow everyone into tiny bite-sized little pieces?

Spencer grabbed his lab notebook from under a pile of textbooks and followed Rebecca into her room. He ran a hand self-consciously over his new haircut. He wasn't sure if he liked it.

Yesterday, Sarah and Rebecca had walked in on him in the bathroom, cutting his own hair in the mirror. He did it every year on his birthday. They had wrestled him to the ground, pried the butter knife out of his hands, and dragged him to a hair salon on Colorado Boulevard.

Now, every time they saw him, which was every few hours, they would ruffle his hair lovingly and twirl its delicate strands in their fingers.

"If only he were a few years older," Sarah lamented from her position at Rebecca's desk. "Then he could be a heartthrob in a boy band," Rebecca sighed from atop her bunk bed.

Spencer rolled his eyes and collapsed into a beanbag on the floor. He wrote out the chemical equations for tomorrow's - nay, today's - titration experiment.

"Girls are so weird," he thought.

* * *

Nerd speak clarifications

1) The Pit

A four-story pit in the sub-sub-basement of the geology building at Caltech. There are landings are each floor, although none of them are room-sized as described in the chapter. There is no bathroom! It was indeed built to discover something or other, but never completed due to scoopage of the discovery. In the episode "Penelope" (Season 3, Episode 9), it was mentioned that Penelope dropped out of school and lived "underground" after losing her parents. I immediately thought of The Pit when I saw this. I've embellished The Pit to be much nicer than it is, because Penelope needs to have a nice comfortable domain to call her own.

2) Penelope's nickname

I consider Grendelin to be the female form of Grendel, a monster who lived in a cave in the legend of Beowulf. The monster would emerge from the cave every once in awhile to wreak havoc on the humans. Beowulf eventually slayed the monster. In the novel "Grendel" by John Gardner, Grendel is depicted as misunderstood rather than evil. If someone had taken the time to befriend him and care about him, perhaps he wouldn't have gone on killing sprees at Hrothgar's mead hall.

3) Spencer's nickname

It came to me one night that Reid + Gube = Rube. Clearly, Rube is not dignified enough for a noblest Knight, so it became the short form of Rubik. I apologize for unleashing this bit of mental pollution upon the world.

4) Odds and ends

Micron - a teeny-tiny measure of distance, 1/1000 of a millimeter.

Celestron - a company that makes awesome telescopes.

Titration experiment - an experiment used to determine the amount of acid in a sample by adding base to react with the acid. When all the acid has been neutralized by the base, the reaction changes color. Acids react with bases in a pre-defined ratio, often one-to-one, so the amount of base added to the reaction can be used to calculate the amount of acid in the sample. If you screw up the titration, the reaction goes overboard, turns bright purple, and you can no longer calculate anything. It would behoove the experimenter not to screw up the acid-base titration, just as it would behoove Reid and Garcia not to screw up the titration of the UnSub. There's no telling what he might do with all that cyanide gas.


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer 1: I do not own Criminal Minds.

Disclaimer 2: I do not own Caltech, although I did go to college there. All characters are fictional, regardless of how much they may resemble actual persons.

Author's Note: The format of this story is unusual. It alternates between 1994-1995 and 2010. I hope the weird format doesn't bother people too much, since I've already got a bunch of chapters written and plan to update regularly. I just need to proofread the chapters before I add them to the story.

Some of the chapters contain quite a bit of nerd speak, but I reserve the right to nerd speak as much as I want in a story about my favorite TV nerds. Nerd speak clarifications may be found at the end of each chapter.

This is my first ever fanfiction. Reading &/ Reviewing are much appreciated. Enjoy!

* * *

Chapter 6

January 2010

"Doctor," Reid repeated.

He spoke in a forceful tone. He waved his cane back and forth in the air, its tip sweeping out a wide arc across the back of the lecture hall. He held the UnSub at his mercy rather than the other way around.

"First of all, Doctor," he continued, "I'd like to congratulate you on your work here today. Rigging the emergency shower and emergency eyewash and emergency sprinklers to dispense cyanide gas on command? That's exactly the way I would've done it myself."

Having established the legitimacy of releasing cyanide gas into a packed lecture hall, all that remained to be debated were the specifics of the apparatus itself.

"I was a chemistry major when I went to school here, way back in the '90s, when I was twelve years old and about this high," he placed his palm a bit higher than five feet from the floor. "Whenever I got bored in lecture, which was every time I attended lecture, I would doodle in my little black notebook. I would draw up detailed schematics for all the pranks I wanted to pull - pranks on Techers, pranks on the public, pranks on the government, pranks on Stephen Hawking whenever he visited from Cambridge and rolled down the Olive Walk in his wheelchair."

He dismissed Stephen Hawking with a backwards wave, tossing his semi-sentient wheelchair after him.

"One of my pranks involved filling Gates Lecture Hall with nitrous oxide - laughing gas - during Chem 1 on the first day of school, when all the eager beaver freshmen would be here, before everyone wised up and stopped going to lecture. Unfortunately, I was a triple major taking nine courses per term and doing research work on the side, so I had to be choosy with my pranks. I never got around to this particular prank, so I'm really glad that you're carrying it out for me today. I get tingly all over, just thinking about a good old proof-of-concept."

He laid claim to the UnSub's plot as if it were his own, which it was, because everything he had told the UnSub had been true.

"If you're anything like me - which you are, since you're a Techer - you would've set up a control station in the steam tunnels, probably in the machine room at the end of the hall," he pointed towards the door that exited into the basement. "You've got a laptop, a pair of pumps, a tank of acid, and a supply of cyanide pellets. Every time you click the mouse on the computer up there, you're sending a command to a program on your laptop, which directs the pump, connected to the acid tank, to squirt acid over the pellets in the reaction chamber, connected to the pipes of the emergency safety system. The acid reacts with the pellets, cyanide gas fizzes up, and the second pump pushes the gas into this room. You know exactly how many liters of gas you need to fill the room to whatever concentration of gas you want (accounting for leakage under the doors, of course), and exactly how many liters of acid and kilograms of pellets you need to produce that quantity of gas. You've secured the doors from the outside, via a remote-controlled electronic locking mechanism, so no one can enter or exit the room and ruin your experiment."

He walked his fingers towards the exit. He turned his body halfway towards it, as if making ready to dart out the door. He represented the UnSub's greatest fear, someone who possessed both the skill and the will to disrupt his precious experiment.

"The only thing I don't understand is why you need to be here in person. I assume that you're sending commands through the Internet. Why can't you do that in your pajamas at home? Wouldn't it be healthier for you, if you hooked up a webcam and watched the whole thing unfold elsewhere?"

"We have a term for your kind in the FBI - LDSK, Long Distance Serial Killer. It's a euphemism for a sniper. As a whole, the FBI doesn't have an exemplary record with snipers, although I personally do."

He extended his thumb and index finger into the shape of a gun, pointed them at the control room, and pretended to fire.

"After I return to Quantico," he pointed towards the exit, "I'm going to suggest a new term for killers like you - SDCK, Short Distance Concurrent Killer. What do you think? Do you like it?" he smiled hopefully. "I think it's very fitting. Except for your apparatus, there's nothing serial about your little scheme, is there? If you weren't here right now, no one in here would have noticed a thing until everyone started flopping around like fish out of water. The smell isn't that strong to begin with, and it fades away after a few minutes. I don't smell anything anymore, do you?"

He sniffed the air, wrinkling his nose like a bunny. He made wafting motions over the emergency eyewash built into the lab bench at the front of the lecture hall. His tone became serious as he asked the question that the UnSub needed him to ask.

"My only question to you today is, Doctor, why are you here?" he asked.

* * *

"Why are you here?" asked Garcia. She looked down at her lap, expecting the UnSub to lash out at her.

This time, he did not lash out. He clicked the mouse instead.

"Good news, bad news," she thought.

The UnSub perched bolt upright on the edge of his swivel chair, his eyes glued to the lecture hall, his fingers curled tightly around the mouse that controlled the flow of cyanide gas into the room. He was transfixed by Reid's condescending monologue.

"55 ppm?" came the sound of Reid's voice. "How high can you go with your apparatus? 100? 200? 300?"

"The CDC recommends 50 ppm as the IDLH for hydrogen cyanide. That's the Immediately Dangerous to Life-or-Health concentration, but the human body can withstand that level of exposure for several hours with no lasting ill effects. It's not that bad unless you go over 100 ppm."

"He's telling me what to do," thought Garcia, "He's telling me to keep the counter below 100 ppm."

"Who are you?" she asked the UnSub, "What do you want?"

"Why are you doing this? Why are you here?" she added in a soft pleading tone.

The UnSub clicked the mouse. 60 ppm.

"Please let this be one of those times when things get worse before they get better," thought Garcia.

* * *

Reid turned and lifted up the screen at the front of the lecture hall. The cyanide counter remained, projected onto the central blackboard in the group of nine.

So far, everything was right on track.

The UnSub was releasing cyanide gas in many small increments rather than one massive burst. He was saving the burst for his endgame, when he would flood the reaction chamber with acid and increase the pressure from his pumps to push visible clouds of gas through the emergency safety system. The cyanide counter would skyrocket, the third digit would appear, and the grace period for cyanide exposure would drop from several hours to several minutes.

That scenario was the UnSub's flight response. He did not plan to escape the lecture hall alive, but he did have a plan to end things quickly if events spiraled out of his control - if the authorities tried to barge in, if someone in the room tried to subdue him. The flight response was his default setting, having already been penciled in as his final act.

The only way to divert the UnSub from his flight response was to activate his fight response. He required a formidable foe to engage in battle. Reid nominated himself.

He turned to face the blackboard. He wrote out the chemical equation for the reaction of potassium cyanide with sulfuric acid that produced hydrogen cyanide and potassium sulfate. He calculated the amounts of reactants and products needed to fill the lecture hall to varying concentrations of cyanide gas, ranging from 10 to 1000 ppm. He drew out the chemical structure of heme as it appeared in the cytochrome a3 subunit of Complex IV, showing its iron(III) atom complexed to cyanide instead of oxygen at the sixth coordination site. He sketched out the metabolic machinery of the cell, showing the mechanism for cyanide toxicity. He diagrammed the steam tunnels in their entirety, showing the critical pipes in colored chalk where they emerged from Physical Plant, where they weaved through the underground passages, where they entered the building and the lecture hall itself. He scribbled down the UnSub's apparatus and added a skull-and-crossbones next to the cartoonish depiction. He wrote "Gates Lecture Hall" in block letters and drew it out as it appeared at the moment - rows and rows of sad faces fading into the background, a single happy face on a stick figure with long hair at the front of the room.

The occupants of the lecture hall sat in silence, as if enraptured by the most fascinating scientific lecture they had ever attended. Reid listened to the staccato tapping of chalk against slate as he thought about the profile.

First, the UnSub was a Techer. He had been an undergrad at Caltech many years ago. His target, his apparatus, his silence - they all pointed to a Techer. He was a quiet unassuming scientist who desired nothing more from the world than to be left alone with his precious experiments in his precious laboratory.

Techers possessed both the skill and the will to carry out the UnSub's plot. Anything that could be conceived in the mind could be realized in the world. For any question, there was an answer. For any problem, there was a solution. For any will, there was a way. Rules were not meant to be broken. They simply did not exist.

At Caltech, the inmates ran the asylum. The endless cycle of convoluted problem sets, eight-hour mid-terms, eighteen-hour finals, all-day lab sessions, and extracurricular research projects was the only thing that prevented Techers from unleashing hordes of self-replicating nanobots across intergalactic space in a quest to convert the existing universe and all its parallel cousins into sludges of gray goo. Reid was sure that the Bureau maintained a file on every student who passed through the Mission Style arches. He reminded himself to have Garcia hack into their files as soon as they returned to Quantico.

Second, the UnSub was not a murderer. In his own mind, he was merely carrying out an experiment, demonstrating an apparatus, hoping for a proof-of-concept.

He had not come to Gates Lecture Hall to savor the deaths of two hundred students and professors. He could have done that in his pajamas at home. He had come to run an experiment. Principal investigators should always be present for their most critical experiments.

He was not a sadist. He did not enjoy human suffering - physical or mental, his own or that of others. Suffering was undignified and unclean. It was full of clutter.

He did not carry a weapon. Reid was no more worried about Garcia's personal safety than he was worried about the personal safety of all the people whose lives now depended on him.

"And on her," he reminded himself.

Facing an UnSub who was a Techer and not a murderer was an advantage for Reid, just as it was a disadvantage for the UnSub. Reid understood both Techers and murderers, but the UnSub only understood Techers. Reid knew that the UnSub was not a murderer, but the UnSub did not know the same fact about Reid.

The UnSub existed in a state of emotional detachment. He had once had a family, but he had lost them in a tragic incident many years ago. He had once had a career, but he had abandoned it in the wake of losing his family. He had coped by withdrawing from the external world and throwing himself into purely intellectual pursuits. He was a self-taught expert in many fields, learning having been the only activity that had occupied his mind and blocked out all sensation in the aftermath of his personal tragedies. All that remained of him was a core of intellect that neither needed or desired emotional attachment of any kind.

Reid recognized himself in the UnSub. He had reacted the same way ten years ago, in the aftermath of committing his mother to a mental institution. He didn't know how many Ph.D.s he would have gotten if he had never met Gideon. He reminded himself to look up Ph.D. programs in the DC area as soon as he returned to Quantico. They would be there if he ever felt the need again. Getting Ph.D.s was a much better method of escape than shooting up on dilaudid.

Reid recognized Garcia in the UnSub. She had reacted the same way fifteen years ago, in the aftermath of losing her parents in a car accident. He didn't know how much trouble she would have gotten into if the FBI had not caught her hacking into their systems and decided to employ her rather than prosecute her.

Techers - like Reid, Garcia, and the UnSub - were vulnerable to detachment in the face of overwhelming emotional trauma. The connections between Techers and the external world were tenuous to begin with. They were easily abandoned. The connections amongst Techers themselves were stronger, but they existed in a world where people externalized their intellects and internalized their emotions. Like the UnSub at present, like Reid in another life, like Garcia in an even earlier life, Techers believed that the world of numbers and variables was superior to the world of humans and their interminable suffering. When things went wrong, Techers fell back upon their intellects. Everything can and should be expressed in terms of numbers.

Sometime in the past few months, the UnSub's core of intellect had stumbled upon a fanciful whim, a thought experiment that it entertained during its copious amounts of spare time. To the intellect, once a thought had been thought and found beautiful, its thinker would be unable to let go. Once conceived in the mind, the thought would be realized in the world. With nothing to smother it, the thought would be easily kindled. The thought experiment would become a real experiment, without the thinker ever recognizing it as an act of mass murder.

The UnSub had not been the first thinker to act upon his thought experiment. Reid recalled a row of data from his database of criminal offenders. It formed the basis for his profile of the UnSub, but he wished, above all else, to avoid the same outcome.

In 1994, while Reid had been a freshman at Caltech, there had been a hostage situation at nearby Occidental College. A former professor in the Philosophy Department had rigged a conference room with explosives ahead of a thesis dissertation seminar. He had locked himself into an adjoining office, waiting for the right moment to trigger the explosion. He had not said a word to the occupants of the conference room. He had stared into space as the students and professors had begged for their lives, as the LAPD crisis negotiators had promised to meet his demands and get him the help that he needed. He had replied only to say that he did not have any demands and that he did not need any help.

In the end, he had pressed the button to set off the explosion, but his apparatus had not worked. He possessed the will, but not the skill, to carry out his plot.

He was currently locked up in the high-security ward of a mental institution, still drifting about in his own world, unwilling or unable to respond to anyone who tried to help him. The psychiatrists had given up on him a long time ago. They had been unable to pull him out of the pit that he had dug for himself after the deaths of his wife and children in a plane crash in 1979.

Albert Einstein once said, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result."

Spencer Reid believed himself to be sane, although the question sometimes drove him hazy.

* * *

The UnSub stared at the surface of the desk, unable to bear the sight of Reid dissecting his scheme on the blackboard. The staccato tapping of chalk against slate scraped away at him, agitating him with each particle of chalk dust that rained upon the floor.

What had once been beautiful in the mind, then on paper, then in the world, now appeared common and dull. It had taken weeks for the UnSub to design and build a cyanide dispersal system, and it had taken minutes for a greater intellect to re-evolve it before his eyes. The greater intellect had perfected his system, had extended it to simultaneously release cyanide gas into every room on campus, as shown in large bold handwriting unmarred by a single erasure mark.

"Who are you?" asked Garcia, "What do you want? Please let these people out. The police will give you anything you want. You can call them. You can make demands."

"I don't have any demands," said the UnSub. He clicked the mouse. 65 ppm.

"Why are you doing this?" she continued, "Why are you here? Please let us out of here. There are people who can help you. Everyone wants to help you."

"I don't need any help," said the UnSub. He clicked the mouse again. 70 ppm.

Garcia nearly fainted in panic. Her vision blurred every few seconds, and she swayed back and forth in her chair.

"Maybe that's the cyanide taking effect," she thought.

She wasn't getting through to the UnSub. Every time she spoke to him, he turned up the cyanide.

She wasn't a profiler. She didn't understand the UnSub through his behaviors and expressions. She didn't have a plan for persuading the UnSub into releasing the hostages. She was only Technical Analyst Penelope Garcia, the one who worked with the elite BAU team as they hunted down monsters all over the country, the one who couldn't really hack it as anything other than a Technical Analyst. The only thing she had going for her was the profiler with the gun at the front of the lecture hall.

Garcia understood Reid through his behaviors and expressions. They were so bizarre that she immediately recognized them as an act. He was setting the stage for a psychodrama starring himself, the UnSub, and herself.

Reid didn't speak to people in a condescending tone, unless people chose to interpret his fact-spouting as condescending towards their own intellects. He didn't wave his cane in the air, unless he needed to point out an obscure statistic on the whiteboard. He didn't draw happy-faced stick figures of himself gloating over a hostage situation, unless he needed to manipulate the psyche of the UnSub.

He did design and build Rube Goldberg machines for performing all manner of tasks - some everyday and menial, others rare and insidious. He was doing it on the blackboard right now.

Princess Grendelin remembered Sir Rubik's little black notebook. It was filled with detailed schematics for all the pranks he wanted to pull. She barely suppressed a smile as she recalled one of the pranks they had pulled together.

Every April, prospective freshman would visit Caltech during Pre-Frosh Weekend to decide whether they wanted to attend. Techers would welcome them and take them on tours of campus, tours that included roofs, pits, steam tunnels, wind tunnels, and last and least important, campus buildings.

Pre-Frosh Weekend was as much about Techers selecting Pre-Frosh as it was about Pre-Frosh selecting Tech. If a Pre-Frosh appeared to be a deleterious addition to the student body, Techers would take it upon themselves to weed him out.

They would whine about their horrible experiences at Caltech. There was too much work and not enough play. Forget play, there was not even enough sleep. The professors hated everyone. In some courses, one person would get an A, two people would get B's, three people would get C's, and everyone else would fail out and have to take the course again. No one was certain whether they would graduate before they burned out or killed themselves.

If their tales of woe failed to deter the undesirable Pre-Frosh, they would turn to psychotic behavior to scare him off.

The residents of Ricketts House, also known as Scurves, were masters of psychotic behavior. They talked to themselves and their imaginary friends during dinner. The student waiters slammed plates of food onto the tables and snatched them away five minutes later, before anyone had finished eating. People threw rolls at each other and pats of butter at the waffle-patterned ceiling of the dining room. Vegans screeched their murderous intentions if non-vegan rolls happened to hit them.

If the Pre-Frosh were lucky, he would get to eat in the dining room. If the Pre-Frosh were unlucky, he would have to eat out of troughs in the courtyard while students played foursquare all around him. After dinner, everyone would change into their inverted pentagram T-shirts, the better to perform Satanic fire-setting rituals around the firepot in the middle of the courtyard. They would drink gallons of water to see who could projectile-vomit the farthest and who could urinate the longest into the flames of the firepot. They would play "Knife on a String", in which one person would swing a knife into the air, turn off the lights, and laugh maniacally while everyone else ran around the lounge trying to avoid the blade. The game had multiple variations - "Axe on a Rope", "Chainsaw on a Chain", "Ebola Syringe on a Catheter". It could be played for hours at a time. Death metal music set the mood for these daily routines.

If the Pre-Frosh looked upon such things and still wished to attend Caltech, they would be welcomed with open arms and disgusting concoctions of alcoholic beverages that should never be mixed together. The rest of them could go to Yale instead.

Princess Grendelin remembered the wall of duct tape that she and Sir Rubik had built across the old wind tunnel under Baxter Hall, the much-despised humanities building. It was a tradition to run at full speed with outspread arms down the pitch black wind tunnel. They had finished building the wall minutes before a group of Pre-Med Pre-Frosh had come hurtling down the corridor. They had hid in an adjoining machine room and squealed in delight as the unfortunate Pre-Frosh had gotten tangled up in the sticky embrace of an excessive amount of duct tape.

The evil scheme had been Sir Rubik's idea. Princess Grendelin remembered him telling her that it had come to him as a fanciful whim during Chem 1, when he usually sat at the back of Gates Lecture Hall while the professor rambled on about topics that he already understood. She remembered thinking that Sir Rubik could be very dangerous if he didn't have courses and research projects to occupy his time, that he had the potential to morph into a mad scientist bent on world domination, that his mind was truly worthy of being feared. She knew for a fact that even Sir Rubik was afraid of his own mind.

Another person who was afraid of Reid's mind was the UnSub. By all appearances, Reid was a colder smarter version of the UnSub. The UnSub was threatened by Reid's intellect and bewildered by Reid's detachment.

Garcia could see that Reid was creeping out the UnSub, scraping away at his impassive exterior and cutting into his core of intellect. The UnSub wished to flee from the lunatic at the blackboard, just as the undesirable Pre-Frosh wished to flee from Caltech after their traumatic experiences during Pre-Frosh Weekend.

The only way to divert the UnSub from his flight response was to activate his fight response. He required a driving force to push him into battle. Garcia nominated herself.

She was not a profiler, but she was a coder. She could see a series of programmable steps leading to the happy ending that she fervently believed in.

The steps were incremental, like the upwards scrolling of the cyanide counter. For each action taken by Garcia, the UnSub would turn up the cyanide a little bit more. That was good news. For each action taken by Reid, the UnSub would spiral a little farther out of his cyanide-scrolling loop. That was good news, as long as the direction of the spiral was conducive to human life. Clockwise or counter-clockwise? Life or death? Alive or dead?

If the UnSub did not have any demands himself, then perhaps he would rise to meet the demands of others. If the UnSub did not need any help himself, then perhaps he would act to help others in need. If the UnSub was not a murderer, then perhaps he would fight against someone who was. Else, no one would die alone, at least.

"Dolphins, for whatever reason, will defend humans against sharks," Garcia thought.

"He has a gun," she whispered to the UnSub, tilting her head in the direction of the lecture hall, "He has a revolver."

The UnSub clicked the mouse. 75 ppm. Good news.

Garcia clammed up and waited for Reid to act. He obliged, pulling his gun out of his messenger bag and pointing it at a student sitting in the second row.

* * *

Nerd speak clarifications

1) Cyanide dispersal system

I used a chemical reaction between potassium cyanide and sulfuric acid to produce cyanide gas. This is the same reaction used in gas chambers during state executions. The emergency safety system would normally carry water into the lecture hall, but I assume that the UnSub flushed it out so he could pump gas through it instead.

2) Psychology of the UnSub/Techers

The psychology in the chapter is made up by me for purposes of the story. I don't want to generalize it to all Caltech students, but there is an element of truth to the severe intellectualizing I mentioned. Everything can and should be expressed in terms of numbers!

3) Rube Goldberg machine

Rube Goldberg is a cartoonist and engineer who drew pictures of very complicated machines for performing very simple tasks. For example, there might be a 50-step-domino-effect/chain-reaction device for cracking an egg.

4) Ricketts/Scurves

Ricketts is a surname, but rickets is a disease caused by vitamin D deficiency. Scurve is derived from scurvy, a disease caused by vitamin C deficiency. The residents of Ricketts House, also known as Scurves, are truly a plague upon humanity, although very few of them are actual Satanists.

5) Knife on a String

A real game played in Ricketts House. Its more hazardous variations are made up by the author.

6) Garcia's programmable steps

The language that Garcia used to describe her steps was very stilted for a reason. They are meant to represent "foreach loops" and "if/else statements" that are at the core of computer programming.

7) Odds and ends

I have nothing against Stephen Hawking, Yale, Pre-Meds, vegans, Satanists, or the humanities. I just remember Reid mentioning Yale as his backup school in the episode "Memoriam" (Season 4, Episode 7). I used to have something against the humanities, but that was back when I still believed that everything can and should be expressed in terms of numbers. How foolish of me!


	7. Chapter 7

Disclaimer 1: I do not own Criminal Minds.

Disclaimer 2: I do not own Caltech, although I did go to college there. All characters are fictional, regardless of how much they may resemble actual persons.

Author's Note: The format of this story is unusual. It alternates between 1994-1995 and 2010. I hope the weird format doesn't bother people too much, since I've already got a bunch of chapters written and plan to update regularly. I just need to proofread the chapters before I add them to the story.

Some of the chapters contain quite a bit of nerd speak, but I reserve the right to nerd speak as much as I want in a story about my favorite TV nerds. Nerd speak clarifications may be found at the end of each chapter.

This is my first ever fanfiction. Reading &/ Reviewing are much appreciated. Enjoy!

* * *

Chapter 7

November 1994

Princess Grendelin emerged from her cave, twirling beneath a sparkling night sky. Her silky multi-colored gown rustled in the breeze. She imagined the colors springing to life as tiny puffy clouds that spiraled in helical patterns around her. She dashed and darted through the crowd, her pointy hat flashing with LEDs, as she searched for her noblest Knight.

Was he the one in the Frankenstein mask with criss-crossed scars, dark under-eye circles, and discolored skin? No, he wasn't that tall yet.

Was he the one in the glow-in-the-dark alien mask with silver duct tape antennae? No, that was a girl.

Was he the one in the Raiders football helmet that catapulted tasty projectiles at any and all passersby? No, that was a professor.

"Ah, there he is!"

The bunny turned at a tap on its shoulder. It stabbed the Princess in the neck with the shiny blade of a retractable knife.

The Princess giggled at the little bunny face, as precious as it was deranged. Dirty white fur poked up in wisps and tufts all over its hairy visage. Its pink rubbery nose wrinkled into a menacing scowl whenever it spotted a potential victim in the crowd. Blood dripped from its sharp canine fangs. Every time the bunny moved, its long floppy ears waggled back and forth on its head before settling into a defensive stance, their furry tips curled out towards the unfortunate observer.

"How did you know it was me?" mumbled the bunny mask.

"Who else would be wearing the bunny mask?" replied the Princess.

"Oh, right. The bunny mask shall be worn by the youngest member of Ricketts House during all Halloween proceedings, including but not limited to Trick-or-Treating in San Marino and the Millikan Pumpkin-Drop Experiment," Sir Rubik recited. "I get to wear it this year and next year and next next year and the year after that!" he pumped his fist in mock glory.

"How was trick-or-treating?" asked the Princess.

"Not very successful. Or very successful, depending on how you look at it. No one gave us any candy. The rich people in San Marino were all really angry about us ringing the doorbell at 10:00 PM. One guy threatened to sic his dog on us. Another guy noticed Pierre and asked if we were all thirty."

"Pierre?"

"He's the one who looks thirty," explained Sir Rubik, pointing out a man with a full dark beard and Neanderthal-like features who towered over everyone in the crowd.

"So you had fun pissing off the rich people?" asked the Princess.

"Yeah, definitely!" replied Sir Rubik. "My only problem was this mask. The fur kept crawling into my mouth every time I tried to talk. I swallowed a bunch of it. There's a hairball in my stomach now."

"Also, I think the mask itself is trying to take over my mind," he whispered, as if whispering would protect him from the bunny mask attached to his face.

"Fear not, Honey Bunny, that's just the nature of Halloween!"

"Indeed!" Honey Bunny agreed. "All Hallow's Eve, when all order is suspended, and the barriers between the natural and the supernatural are temporarily remoooooooved!"

"I've been told that the bunny mask is capable of growing out its fur," he continued. "One of the seniors bought it when he was a freshman, from a group of carnies who lived in an abandoned boxcar in Orange County."

"Alas, dear Bunny, that's just the indomitable evil of Orange County shining through," explained the Princess.

"Ah, I see," said the Bunny Knight. "I fear to fall under its dreadful grasp, yet I shall try to resist its evil influence until the crisis is over."

He pointed at the roof of Millikan Library, squinting to see the coolers of liquid nitrogen where the pumpkins were frozen before they were thrown off the top of the nine-story building. It was an annual Halloween tradition, brought to the huddled masses by the carefree hippies of Dabney House.

Princess Grendelin winced beneath her sequined masquerade mask. She had been one of those carefree hippies this time last year, wandering freely around campus in her bare feet, tie-dyed wardrobe, and waist-length blonde hair. Now, she only ventured outside after dark or in disguise, withdrawing from human contact with anyone who was not her noblest Knight.

"Wow!" Sir Rubik exclaimed, as the first pumpkin whooshed down the side of Millikan Library. It shattered into pulpy smithereens on the concrete steps below. The second pumpkin flew out in a wider parabola, sending the crowd scurrying backwards out of the drop zone. The pumpkins kept coming, one by one, all of them shattering spectacularly when they hit the ground, some of them hitting clusters of landscaping or the side of the building as voices blared out their approval.

Princess Grendelin's watch beeped midnight. Halloween was over, replaced in a split second by the dreary month of November. Her carriage was about to turn back into a pumpkin. That pumpkin was about to fling itself off a nine-story building if she failed to retreat forthwith into her four-story pit.

* * *

Lionel watched in slow motion horror, his pale blue eyes bugging out of their sockets, as his mother's ear dropped into her bowl of custard. She spooned it up, along with a generous helping of bloody custard, and slurped the revolting mixture into her mouth. The custard slid smoothly down her throat while she chomped down upon the cartilaginous appendage, the portions protruding from her lips still identifiable as a human ear.

Princess Grendelin ran from her bedroom into the adjoining bathroom. She swallowed a tide of bile rising up her throat.

"What is wrong with you?" she yelled out the door.

Sir Rubik cackled.

"What do you mean?" he asked, "That's the best scene in the whole movie! The lawnmower scene is great too, and so is the ending scene, but nothing compares to the custard scene!"

"You, Sir, are a sicko!" retorted the Princess.

Sir Rubik snorted dismissively. The Princess did not share his taste in zombie movies.

"Dead Alive" - in which an old woman turns into a zombie after being bitten by a Sumatran Rat-Monkey at the zoo and her son attempts to hide her affliction from the townspeople while more and more of them turn into zombies and the situation spirals out of control with the son and his love interest having to destroy the zombies using various household appliances - was one of the greatest movies of all time. It was also one of the goriest, but that was part of its appeal.

Sir Rubik clicked the remote, removing his beloved custard scene from the sheet-covered wall. He donned the bunny mask and armed himself with the retractable knife.

"The bunny mask commands you to watch!" he intoned in a deep ominous voice.

He plunged his knife into the bathroom door as the Princess shrank back against the sink. She hissed at the horrible creature, sending it scurrying backwards into the dark bedroom.

"Who dares displease the bunny mask?" he demanded, zombie-walking his way back and forth between the railing and the bed. He added Darth Vader breathing noises for dramatic effect.

The Princess emerged from the bathroom, brandishing a shiny purple lightsaber. She advanced upon the Darth Vader-Bunny-Zombie-Creature with masterful stealth. She snuck up on it from behind and quickly put it out of its misery and obvious confusion.

The creature writhed in a heap on the rug before collapsing onto its back, one hand grasping at the air, the other hand clutching at its chest over its heart. The Princess felt a wave of sympathy for the pathetic creature. She bent over it and peeled off the bunny mask. A calmness swept over its features as the creature shook off the evil possessive forces within the insidious mass of fur. It expired peacefully in the arms of the Princess.

Or so the Princess thought.

Sir Rubik snorted from his dying position on the floor. He looked at his watch. It was 2:00 AM.

"Ugh, chem lab in the morning," he groaned, crawling up and grabbing his messenger bag from the foot of the bed.

"Oh, you'd better go then," said the Princess, making a face at the mention of chem lab. "Just one more thing before you leave..." she mumbled mysteriously.

She crossed to the railing, rummaged in a cardboard box, and lifted out a large orange pumpkin. She hollowed out the gourd, dumped in a five-pound bag of sugar, and added enough water to fill the volume within. She sprinkled in a packet of baker's yeast and covered the opening with plastic wrap.

"All done!" she said, "We shall imbibe liquor most sweet from pumpkin most pure at the time of Thanksgiving!"

"You mean it'll turn alcoholic in a month?" asked Sir Rubik.

"Of course, silly Rube!" she replied, stroking the pumpkin lovingly over its grooves.

"Fare thee well then, dear Princess, until our next meeting. Thy noblest Knight awaiteth the gustatory delights of thy healing elixir," said Sir Rubik.

He turned, stashed the bunny mask and retractable knife into his messenger bag, and placed one hand and one foot upon a rung of the metal ladder. He kissed the Princess chivalrously on the hand, as he was wont to do, before leaving.

Princess Grendelin shone her flashlight up The Pit, its beam following the retreating form of her noblest Knight. She felt a tinge of jealousy. She crouched alone and afraid in this dark hole in the ground while he roamed wild and free in the sun-lit world above.

* * *

"Hiccup!"

"Hiccup!"

"Hiccup!"

Spencer tried to hide the sound of his hiccuping as he sat at the back of Gates Lecture Hall. He doodled in his little black notebook. The lecture was once again incoherent and monotone. He didn't take notes, because he already knew all about molecular orbital theory.

It was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and Spencer was looking forward to flying home and seeing his mother for the first time since he had arrived at Caltech.

He took a sip of pumpkin ale. Princess Grendelin had given him an ample supply of the alcoholic beverage in small laboratory vials that he carried around in his pockets. She had soothed his qualms about drinking alcoholic beverages during lecture, convincing him that enjoying a little homemade pumpkin ale as a Thanksgiving treat didn't really make him a bonafide boozehound.

The sweet mildewy liquid tickled his taste buds. It slid smoothly down his throat and filled his stomach with a warm sensation. A bonafide boozehound would have placed its alcohol content on the spectrum between red wine and sake.

Spencer had shared the concoction with his friends in Ricketts House the night before. Half of them had loved it, and the other half had deemed it the vilest substance known to humankind. One of the upperclassman chemistry majors had offered to analyze it for its methanol content. Methanol had a bad habit of blinding its drinkers.

"Spender! Spender!" came the sound of an urgent voice. Spencer felt a pair of hands shake him by the shoulders.

"What? What? Mom? Princess?"

"It's noon," said Eric, "Doesn't your flight leave in an hour?"

Spencer snapped out of his stupor and stared at the watch over his sleeve. It read 12:00 PM. He had gotten drunk on pumpkin ale, passed out, slept through lecture, then continued sleeping for another hour in the empty lecture hall.

He sprang out of his seat and dashed into the aisle. Eric shoved his messenger bag into his hands.

"I saw the Super Shuttle pull up on Holliston just now! You can still catch it if you run!" said Eric.

"Thanks, Eric! Thanks! Have a good Thanksgiving!" Spencer yelled, while barging out the door.

He arrived at the bus stop just in time to see the Super Shuttle pull up to the intersection of Holliston and Hill. It disappeared around the corner as he panted for breath on the sidewalk.

"Come on, Rube, get in!" came the sound of a cheerful voice from the street.

"Princess!" screeched Sir Rubik.

He grinned, yanked the door open, and plopped down into the passenger seat of an ancient VW Beetle. The junkyard jalopy rumbled loudly as it sped down California Boulevard towards the 110 Freeway.

"Oh man, oh man, oh man," gasped Sir Rubik. "I shouldn't have drunk so much pumpkin ale! It was so good though! I couldn't help myself!"

"What if we don't make it to the airport in time?" he panicked.

The Princess laughed, her eyes twinkling behind the polka-dotted frames of her glasses. She was wearing a turban over her blue and pink hair, in honor of Millikan Man, the old man who wandered around campus in his turban and tutu outfit, quietly lamenting the many abuses of the Institute.

"Don't worry, dear Rube, you're in good hands with me and my mighty steed!" she soothed him.

"I thought your mighty steed was a Daihatsu. I didn't even know that you owned a car!" said Sir Rubik, still gasping for breath. "How did you know I was going to be late for the Super Shuttle?"

"I didn't know," she replied. "I was driving around randomly to charge the car battery, so I thought I'd check to see if you were still waiting at the bus stop. I brought you some more pumpkin ale for your flight, in case you've run out already. I know you can't resist my pumpkin ale!" she smirked.

"Please, please!" begged Sir Rubik. "No more pumpkin ale! Not for awhile at least. I think I've learned my lesson."

The dilapidated Beetle chugged out its displeasure as the Princess accelerated onto the freeway. She tightened her grip on the steering wheel. She licked her shiny red lips nervously. She was ill at ease in the mid-day traffic, her eyes darting into the rearview mirror every few seconds, her chin quivering slightly every time she swallowed a lump in her throat.

"Are you OK?" asked Sir Rubik.

"Oh, I'm fine," answered the Princess. "I just don't like driving that much, especially not on the freeway..."

"Oh, I didn't know," said Sir Rubik. "I'm sorry..." he trailed off with a guilty expression. He was sure that somewhere in the codes of chivalry, it was stated that noblest knights should never bring discomfiture to their princesses.

"I order you to shush, Sir Rubik!" said the Princess.

"For my noblest Knight, anything!" she proclaimed confidently.

She merged her way into the fast lane, cutting off an angry soccer mom with an SUV-ful of screaming children. Whatever her qualms about driving, they didn't seem to affect her skills. She glanced sideways at Sir Rubik and gave him a reassuring smile before focusing her attention back onto the freeway.

Spencer stared pensively out the dirty windshield as he pondered the Princess's behaviors and expressions.

It was costing her something to drive on the freeway. It was costing her a lot. He didn't know what horrors the traffic-choked freeway held for the Princess, but he knew that she was trying to hide her discomfort long enough to deliver him to the airport. She was doing it so he could be with his mother, his only family, for Thanksgiving. He wondered if she would be with her own family for Thanksgiving. He didn't think that she would. He would have invited her home with him for Thanksgiving, but there was the matter of the schizophrenic mother that he didn't want anyone to find out about. He felt guilty, guilty about everything - his mother, his father, the Princess and her obvious unease. The Princess had done so much for him, and he had done nothing for the Princess.

Spencer sighed softly. He would not realize the flawed nature of his assumptions for a long time to come. They could not be farther from the truth.

He decided to drop the subject. What right did he have to psychoanalyze the Princess during one of her rare weak moments? Whatever she was overcoming, she was overcoming it for him, and he loved her even more, in his simple childish way, than he already did.

* * *

Nerd speak clarifications

1) Millikan Pumpkin-Drop Experiment

Named after the famous Millikan Oil-Drop Experiment, used to calculate the charge of the electron. The pumpkins are supposed to produce triboluminescence, flashes of light caused by objects shattering or being pulled apart. I have never seen these flashes. Triboluminescence also observed with masking tape when the strip is pulled away from the roll.

2) Millikan Man

An old man who walked around campus in a turban and tutu. He was an undergrad and grad student at Caltech in the '30s. Had some kind of patent dispute with the Institute, which he eventually won. Inventor and eccentric genius.

3) Pumpkin Ale

One of the author's favorite homemade beverages. Recipe as described in the chapter. Author not responsible for blinding anyone.


	8. Chapter 8

Disclaimer 1: I do not own Criminal Minds.

Disclaimer 2: I do not own Caltech, although I did go to college there. All characters are fictional, regardless of how much they may resemble actual persons.

Author's Note: The format of this story is unusual. It alternates between 1994-1995 and 2010. I hope the weird format doesn't bother people too much, since I've already got a bunch of chapters written and plan to update regularly. I just need to proofread the chapters before I add them to the story.

Some of the chapters contain quite a bit of nerd speak, but I reserve the right to nerd speak as much as I want in a story about my favorite TV nerds. Nerd speak clarifications may be found at the end of each chapter.

This is my first ever fanfiction. Reading &/ Reviewing are much appreciated. Enjoy!

* * *

Chapter 8

January 2010

"Let's play a game," said Reid.

He smiled ingratiatingly in the direction of the control room. His smile, which was usually small and shy or wide and genuine, now carried a hint of mischief. It was even more charming than usual.

"Oops! How could I forget this?" he laughed.

He reached behind him and retrieved a bullet from the supply of bullets that he carried around in his bag at all times. He held it up to show the UnSub before loading it into his revolver. His brain recorded a reel - his right hand holding the revolver, his left hand introducing the bullet into the chamber, his left hand rotating the cylinder in swift clicks, his right hand pointing the barrel at the young man quivering before him.

Fear wafted up from the occupants of the lecture hall, now held hostage by two psychotic individuals.

Garcia twisted her head around, trying to spot Reid out of the corner of her eye. She needed to know what he was doing, so she could help the UnSub save them from him.

"What the hell is he doing?" mumbled the UnSub.

"As you can see, Doctor, there's only one bullet in this gun," Reid explained. "If it fires, I get to leave. If it doesn't fire, you get to flood the room with cyanide."

He tapped the gun against the head of the cowering student, waiting for the UnSub to confirm his participation in the game.

"I'm helping you," he added, "I'm helping you get rid of them. Either way, you win!"

"Is he crazy?" murmured the UnSub.

"Yes..." Garcia replied slowly, as if hesitating on a diagnosis, "I think he's finally lost it..."

She allowed her voice to trail off and her eyes to assume a distant look. She hoped that the UnSub would understand her through her behaviors and expressions.

"What do you mean?" he asked, turning to her expectantly.

He wanted Reid to be crazy. He needed Reid to be crazy. Crazy people were defective. Craziness overrode intelligence, reduced intelligence to irrelevance, nicked the surface of synthetic materials harder than diamond. In battle, gods were invincible, but men could be engaged.

Besides, it helped him convince himself that he was not the crazy one in the lecture hall.

"I should've told you earlier," said Garcia, "I should've told you that he's kind of a nutcase."

She twirled her index finger in circles against her temple while the UnSub glanced at Reid, then at her, then at Reid again.

"I'm only here to run an experiment," he explained, leaning back in his swivel chair. "I'm only here to test my apparatus," he continued, "It's a proof-of-concept."

He clicked the mouse and pointed at the cyanide counter as it scrolled up to 80 ppm. Good news.

"Please," said Garcia, "Please put that down," she indicated the mouse. "You have to help us. You have to do something. He's going to shoot that boy if you don't do something. Please don't let him shoot the boy!" she begged.

"What am I supposed to do? He's the one with the gun," replied the UnSub.

He stared sincerely into her eyes, willing her to understand his untenable position.

"Yes, he's the one with the gun!" she snapped. "He also happens to be an FBI agent, so he knows how to use it! Oh, and did I forget to mention that he's a paranoid schizophrenic in the midst of a delusional episode?"

Garcia flinched. The words had slipped out of her mouth without being censored through her brain. She was disturbed to find them bolstering her confidence.

She was not a natural liar. She was not adept at pulling self-consistent fantasies out of thin air. She was not a master manipulator like Gideon or Hotch or even JJ, who could twist the annoying gnat-like reporters around her little finger with a wink and a smirk. In the heat of the moment, this was what she had come up with, and this was what she would use, even if it hit a little too close to home.

The UnSub gawked in surprise. Garcia couldn't tell if he was surprised by the FBI part or the schizophrenia part. The FBI part was written on the blackboard for all to see, but the UnSub had not paid any attention to it so far.

"Is he really schizophrenic?" he asked.

"Of course!" thought Garcia, "How typical! One psycho obsessed with another psycho! Who cares about the FBI?"

"Yes," she replied calmly.

Things were looking up. The UnSub was willing to engage in conversation with her, now that they had discovered a mutual topic of interest.

"Why don't you just let him go?" she suggested. "Crazy or not, I think he just wants to get out of here alive."

"There's no way out of here," said the UnSub. "I rigged the doors just like he said. Once the doors are locked, there's nothing I can do to disengage them."

"There is a way out of here," said Garcia, "There is! There's a prep room behind the lecture hall, where the TAs set up demonstrations before lecture."

She pointed at a set of doors to the left of the blackboard.

"I know," said the UnSub, "The only way out of there is through here."

"No!" Garcia insisted, "No! There's a hole in the wall in the prep room. It's a passage into the steam tunnels. It's right above the floor, just wide enough for one person to squeeze through. It's normally blocked off with bricks."

"Please let him out before he hurts anyone," she implored, feigning desperation.

Her voice obeyed, coming out thin and raspy through a dry throat. She coughed to clear her throat.

The probability of Reid leaving the room voluntarily was slightly lower than the probability of Comet Shoemaker-Levy re-forming itself in Jupiter's atmosphere and launching itself into a collision course with Earth.

"No!" protested the UnSub. "I told you already. I can't let him out. He knows everything about my experiment - how it works, where it's located, what I'm trying to do with it. He's going to ruin everything if I let him out of here!"

He folded his arms across his chest in a show of adamancy. He was relieved that Reid had stopped doodling on the blackboard, but the gun was beginning to disturb him. Guns made him uncomfortable. He was not prepared to see someone get shot in front of him. It hurt him to imagine it. It felt like he was getting shot himself. It was the empathy that Reid wished to extract from him.

"You have to let him out!" Garcia demanded. "After he shoots that boy, he's going to load another bullet into that gun and pick out someone else to shoot! Once he's tasted blood, he won't stop, not even to save his own life! He's got enough bullets to kill half the people in here! He's enjoying this!"

"I said no!" shouted the UnSub. "He's not leaving this room! If he tries to leave, I'm going to flood the room with cyanide! That'll stop him in his tracks!"

"No, no, no, don't do that! Whatever you do, do not do that!" Garcia shrieked.

She drew in her breath, so sharply that it hurt her ribs, as the UnSub grabbed the mouse. He was eager to rid himself of his mortal enemy. The rest of the people in the lecture hall did not exist, at least not yet.

"I have a better idea," Garcia whispered conspiratorially.

She licked her dry lips. The UnSub leaned forward eagerly, removing his hand from the mouse in the same motion.

"What kind of idea?" he asked.

"Let the boy out," she whispered.

She hoped that Reid would shoot the boy soon, so the UnSub could win the first round.

"What boy?" asked the UnSub.

"The boy he's threatening to shoot!" she yelled, her face reddening with frustration, or cyanide poisoning, or both.

"The boy, the boy, the boy," repeated the UnSub, "Yes, let the boy out!"

He clapped his hands together and rubbed his forearms with his palms. He welcomed any alternative, as long as it diverted the lunatic from his precious experiment.

* * *

Reid did not second-guess himself before he squeezed the trigger. A reel played itself over and over before his eyes. In it, his left hand loaded a bullet into a chamber of his revolver as a digit burned itself into the gray metal surface of the chamber. Each chamber held a different digit, ranging from 1 to 6. His left hand rotated the cylinder, the digits rotating with the chambers. Digits and chambers came to rest where he chose them to rest. The bullet was located in chamber 6. The barrel was aligned with chamber 1.

The UnSub froze, his mouth hanging open, his eyes widening in shock, as he watched Reid shoot the young man.

"Let the boy go!" he yelled at Garcia. "What the hell are you waiting for? Do it! Now!"

He shoved a microphone into her face and shook her by the shoulders.

"He says he won this round," Garcia squeaked into the microphone.

"What are you talking about?" asked the UnSub. "I told you to let the boy go! I'm not playing his game!" he pointed at Reid.

Reid held his hands out towards the control room, gesturing with his palms, as if to say, "You got me! You won! Where's the cyanide?" he raised his eyebrows.

The UnSub shook the microphone in Garcia's face. She decided that he had suffered enough.

"He says he won this round," she repeated, "He says to let the student go."

Reid smiled widely. This time, it was genuine.

"So you want to play again?" he asked the UnSub. "Excellent! You should've told me earlier," he cocked the hammer of his revolver.

He scanned the room for his next target as Garcia gave the student instructions for exiting the lecture hall. The boy scurried into the prep room the moment she mentioned the hole in the wall.

The UnSub breathed a sigh of relief and clicked the mouse. The cyanide counter scrolled up to 85 ppm, soothing him with its predictability. He leaned back in his chair, preparing to detach himself from the situation. His fingers twitched on the mouse, as if they dreaded the consequences of the actions they so desired to take.

Reid grabbed the arm of a middle-aged woman in the third row. He dragged her out of her seat by her long brown hair and pushed her up against the blackboard. Her hair smudged his elegant chalk drawings. He frowned in annoyance as he raised the revolver to her head.

"Oh God, not again," cried Garcia.

Tears of panic rolled down her cheeks, smearing her makeup. They had lain under the surface all day, even before the UnSub had entered the lecture hall. Now was a good time to let them out.

"Please!" she begged the UnSub, "Please do something! Don't let him kill her!"

"What the hell is wrong with him?" replied the UnSub. "One minute he's doodling on the blackboard, and the next minute he's firing his gun at people!"

"That's because he's ill!" replied Garcia. "He probably thinks you'll let him out if he helps you kill a few of the hostages. He thinks you're here to kill people rather than run your experiment! He thinks you're enjoying this as much as he is!"

"This isn't his first delusional episode," she continued. "He's been having delusions for awhile, ever since he started experimenting with drugs three years ago. Last week, I saw him talking to his imaginary friends, trying to convince them to get him more drugs from his dealer."

She vowed to bake Reid a four-story stack of cookies if they ever got out of here alive.

"Fascinating," said the UnSub. "Substance abuse is associated with schizophrenia in statistical surveys of patients, but it's as yet unclear whether the abuse is a cause or consequence of the disorder."

Garcia winced. As soon as the words had escaped her mouth, she had recognized them as a mistake. They would push the UnSub back into his intellectual hole. They would make him sound exactly like Reid.

It was a good thing that Reid chose that moment to pull the trigger. Triggers and brains didn't play well with each other.

"Please," Garcia pleaded, "Please let her go!"

"Yes, yes!" said the UnSub, "She can leave! The gun didn't fire, so I won again! I'm going to let her go!"

He was beginning to enjoy his victories. He was beginning to consider himself a savior.

"She can go!" Garcia spoke into the microphone.

The woman glanced around the lecture hall before she fled into the safety of the prep room. Garcia guessed that she was a mother, a natural protector, someone who entertained qualms about leaving everyone else behind. Garcia hoped that the woman would not have an opportunity to experience survivor's guilt.

"You can't let him do this again!" she demanded, "That gun has to fire eventually!"

Reid pointed the gun at an elderly professor wearing a yarmulke over his white hair.

"You wanna know why he's still in the Bureau?" she asked, "Why he hasn't been locked up in a mental institution with his loony mother?"

"It's because he's a genius. He's had exceptions made for him his entire life, just because he's a genius. He has more knowledge than the rest of the FBI combined. He sees signal where others see noise. The BAU needs him to help them catch serial killers. They don't care that he's getting crazier by the minute. He stares at pictures of gruesome crime scenes and eviscerated bodies all day. He has an eidetic memory, so those images get burned into his brain. Don't you think they're screwing with his mind? Don't you know that schizophrenia is genetically passed?"

"Really?" asked the UnSub curiously, "He has an eidetic memory?"

He was curious about Reid's mental state. He didn't register Garcia's words about the crime scenes, the serial killers, or the FBI. He didn't understand how those entities pertained to him.

"Yes, but that's not the point!" yelled Garcia, "The point is that you're the only one who can help us! You're the one in charge, not him! He's crazy, but he's not suicidal. He wants to get out of here alive. He knows you won't let him kill anyone, so he thinks you'll have to release him eventually! That gun will fire eventually!"

She ignored the fact that Reid had already killed two people. The intent to murder, the intent that went as far as squeezing the trigger, was no different from the act itself.

"Stop pushing me!" shouted the UnSub, "Shut up for a minute and let me think!"

He was getting frustrated, as frustrated as one would get if one were trying to remember something, something just out of grasp, something at the tip of the tongue, something half-formed by the lips... And yet, it was stuck in the folds of his brain. It was so frustrating!

"There's got to be a way out of this! I know I can't let him go, so..."

He rubbed his fingers over his eyes, searching for something behind them. For any question, there was an answer. For any problem, there was a solution. For any will, there was a way.

Reid squeezed the trigger against the head of the elderly professor.

"You're right, you're right!" exclaimed the UnSub. "I'm the one in charge here! It's my experiment, and I can do whatever I want with it! I can turn up the cyanide!"

He turned eagerly towards the computer screen.

Garcia's heart palpitated in her heaving chest. She would have felt a tinge of jealousy, but the emotion was stuck in the folds of her brain. Reid would get to die with the students and professors in the lecture hall, but she would have to die with the UnSub in this dark little hole. Apparently, it was her lot in life.

The UnSub clicked the mouse. 90 ppm.

Garcia sighed happily. Her brain lacked the coherence that it needed to dissect further emotions - relief that the UnSub was turning up the cyanide, relief that the UnSub was not turning up the cyanide.

"Threaten him again," she murmured, "Just threaten him! You don't have to turn up the cyanide for real! Just make him think that you're going to do it!"

She didn't dare raise her voice above a whisper, fearing that the extra decibels would tip the UnSub into his flight response.

"Reid?" she wondered. "What are you waiting for? Where's your next target?"

"Oh, there she is," she thought.

Reid pulled the trigger at his fourth target.

The UnSub clicked the mouse again. 95 ppm. Good news?

Garcia coughed. It was cold. Her wrists ached where the handcuffs cut into her flesh.

The UnSub was winning the game. He was still running his experiment while everyone else was still running out of time.

* * *

Reid paused at the blackboard as he picked out his fourth target. He resisted the urge to cough. He suppressed a wheeze.

"Do not cough," he thought, "Do not wheeze. Psychotic murderers do not display weakness in front of their victims."

The reel played itself again. Digits pulsated over chambers. The bullet was located in chamber 6. The barrel was aligned with chamber 4.

He rubbed at a spot of pressure impinging upon his forehead. It appeared whenever he pointed a gun at someone or whenever someone pointed a gun at him. He had felt it for the first time when he had shot Philip Dowd in the head. Someone like Garcia, who had never shot anyone, had probably never felt it.

Reid leaned over a petite Asian woman sitting in an aisle seat. He picked her, because she reminded him of Dr. Kimura from the Great Anthrax Debacle of 2009. He had become good friends with Dr. Kimura in the aftermath of the incident. Bio-terrorism had a way of bringing people together.

This time, when he pulled the trigger, he felt the sting of a white hot bullet tear through the tenuous layers of flesh - ectoderm, mesoderm, endoderm.

* * *

"Why won't you listen to me?" Garcia asked weakly. "I know him!" she glanced at Reid. "No matter how crazy he is, he still wants to get out of here alive. He'll give it up if you threaten to turn up the cyanide!"

"Why won't you shut up?" hissed the UnSub.

He was angry. Anger had replaced frustration as the dominant emotion in his brain. Perhaps he had smoothed out the folds.

"I can't turn up the cyanide!" he shook his finger at her, "Everyone in here will die!"

He stopped abruptly. His face fell. He made a concrete connection between the revolver pointed at its fifth target and the cyanide gas streaming into the room. His eyes darted from side to side. His fingers flew away from the mouse.

Reid rubbed his forehead involuntarily. For a moment, when he had pulled the trigger, he had watched the digit over the chamber change from 4 to 6. It had been a hallucination caused by anxiety or cyanide or schizophrenia - he didn't have time to untangle the stressors. He had imagined the consequences of the shot upon his own body. It had hurt so much more than getting shot in the knee.

He jumped at the sound of the UnSub's voice as it rang out across the lecture hall.

"Stop!" shouted the UnSub, "Drop the gun! One move from you, Doctor, and I flood the room with cyanide!"

Reid noted that the UnSub had addressed him in the same manner that he had addressed the UnSub. He froze, his gun aimed at a big burly man in his early thirties. It was Pierre, "Thirty-Year-Old Frosh", a friend from college who was now an assistant professor in the Department of Geological and Planetary Sciences.

He feigned a slight tinge of hesitation as he cocked the barrel of the gun upwards, away from Pierre's forehead. He feigned a larger tinge of reluctance as he drew his arm back towards his chest, the gun still aimed at the ceiling. He feigned a touch of resignation as he stepped away from his intended target.

He was good at feigning emotions that he did not feel, but the subterfuge wore him out, made him shivery and achy all over. He allowed the fear that had boiled under his cold exterior to shine through as he turned to face the UnSub.

"Put your gun on the floor and sit down!" yelled the UnSub. "Do it! Now!"

His voice, now that he had taken charge of the situation, carried a familiar tone. He sounded like Morgan, every time Morgan barged into an UnSub's apartment, kicking down the door and physically subduing the cowardly offender.

"Tell them to get out of here," the UnSub ordered Garcia. "What the hell are you waiting for?"

"He says you can all go," said Garcia, her voice quavering in relief. "The same way as the others, through the passage into the steam tunnels."

Her words sounded ridiculous. They sounded like the script for the mad-dash escape sequence at the end of an Indiana Jones movie.

"Tell them not to let anyone in here," said the UnSub, "The order stands."

Garcia repeated his words robotically. She didn't know what he was talking about. She supposed that he had left an order for the police, a threat about flooding the room with cyanide if the SWAT team tried to force their way into the lecture hall. She was glad that he had. The SWAT team would interfere with the proceedings. Reid had not written them a part in his insane psychodrama.

Reid and Garcia had titrated the UnSub to his endpoint. By their calculations, the UnSub contained four clicks of the trigger. There was a fifth click remaining, which they could use later, if they needed, to titrate him again.

Garcia shook her head involuntarily. She wasn't a profiler, and she didn't want to become one. She couldn't begin to understand the UnSub.

He had taken precautions to barricade himself in the control room, to shield himself from the authorities, to protect himself from the physical effects of cyanide poisoning. He had done all this without recognizing the nature of his actions. He had not seen himself for what he was until a more intelligent, more insidious, more psychotic individual had rammed through his wall of detachment.

If Garcia had not been there, the UnSub would have activated his flight response. She was the one who had diverted him from it. She was the one who had pushed him into his fight response.

He had wished to flee, but she had pushed him to stand his ground and fight. She had looked upon him as a protector, spooling the empathy out of him click by click, click of mouse and click of trigger. He had been eager to assume the role. Once he had realized the deadly nature of his actions, he had been even more eager to assume the role. It was the way that his mind had chosen to protect its own sanity.

Garcia congratulated herself as the students and professors disappeared through the door of the prep room. Soon, they would roam wild and free in the sun-lit world above, while she, Princess of her domain, choked to death in her dark little hole, and he, her noblest Knight, did the same in his spacious one. She wondered if the SWAT team would pay heed to the UnSub's warning, now that only two casualties remained to be incurred. She wondered if the freed captives considered herself a savior or an accomplice.

"Perhaps they were informing the authorities about the three psychotic individuals who had held them hostage in the lecture hall," she mused.

She looked down at Reid. He perched on the back of an aisle seat, on the left side of the lecture hall, where she could see him without contorting herself. He coughed into one hand while he rubbed his forehead with the other. He tugged at his shirt every now and then, clutching at his chest over his heart. His normally pale complexion was unusually ruddy.

Psychotic murderers always waited until their victims were out of sight before they allowed themselves to display any sign of weakness.

Garcia breathed deeply, trying to force air through the tight band around her chest. She tried to blink away the blurriness in her vision. The digits of the cyanide counter scrolled slowly. She was annoyed that she couldn't make them out. When they finally stopped scrolling, all she could do was count them - one, two, three.

The loop was not over.

The UnSub shook a glass vial in the light of the computer screen. Garcia smiled as he injected a syringeful of the dark red liquid into her arm.

* * *

Nerd speak clarifications

1) The hole in the wall

Does not exist in Gates Lecture Hall, but does exist at multiple locations in the steam tunnels. There are passages running hundreds of feet between different locations. Students have been known to skooch through them, for purposes that will never be fully understood.

2) Layers of flesh

Ectoderm is skin and internal lining. Mesoderm is muscle and bone. Endoderm is organs. In this case, Mr. Beautiful Brain.


	9. Chapter 9

Disclaimer 1: I do not own Criminal Minds.

Disclaimer 2: I do not own Caltech, although I did go to college there. All characters are fictional, regardless of how much they may resemble actual persons.

Author's Note: The format of this story is unusual. It alternates between 1994-1995 and 2010. I hope the weird format doesn't bother people too much, since I've already got a bunch of chapters written and plan to update regularly. I just need to proofread the chapters before I add them to the story.

Some of the chapters contain quite a bit of nerd speak, but I reserve the right to nerd speak as much as I want in a story about my favorite TV nerds. Nerd speak clarifications may be found at the end of each chapter.

This is my first ever fanfiction. Reading &/ Reviewing are much appreciated. Enjoy!

* * *

Chapter 9

December 1994

Spencer waited in the open doorway of the brightly lit bathroom, watching the minute hand of his pocketwatch tick up to twelve. At exactly 7:00 AM, he scurried into the dim hallway, flicked on the CD player, scurried back into the bathroom, flicked off the lights, and sprinted blindly down the completely dark hallway, then blindly down the equally dark stairs.

The residents of Crud alley took pains to ensure that no light ever polluted their blissful darkness. All the windows were foiled over, and all the walls were painted black.

"The Ride of the Valkyries" blared into every alley in Ricketts House. The same despicable music blared into every alley in every one of the seven Student Houses. It was Finals Week, which meant "The Ride" was the daily wake-up call for all nerds and nerdettes to get out of bed and study for their exams.

Spencer yawned widely. It was time to go to sleep.

He walked across the courtyard in the chilly December morning, enjoying the obnoxious music. One of the seniors in Crud had entrusted him with the task of blasting "The Ride" on the last day of finals, and Spencer took his Ricketts House duties very seriously.

He climbed up the stairs to his room in Snatch alley, stopping by the kitchen on the way. A tiny turkey sat in a roasting pan on the kitchen table, its little legs tied together with string, its tender skin glowing with melted butter. Spencer picked it up and placed it lovingly into the pre-heated oven.

Back in his room, he set the kitchen timer and crawled into his sleeping bag on the floor. The timer would remind him to tent and baste the turkey. Right now, he needed to get some sleep so he could be awake and alert for his date with Princess Grendelin.

"It's not a date," he muttered to himself, "It's a Christmas feast."

* * *

Princess Grendelin frowned as she tasted her spaghetti meat sauce. "Not enough salt!" she told herself.

She picked up the gecko-shaped salt shaker and carefully sprinkled more salt into the simmering mixture. "Don't overdo it!" she warned herself.

Humming softly, the Princess stirred the thick sauce with a wooden spoon. Its delectable smell did nothing to relieve her anxieties. Would Sir Rubik like her homemade cuisine as much as he liked her homemade spirits?

While the sauce simmered in its pot, Princess Grendelin poured a bottle of liquid through a funnel lined with filter paper. The reddish gold elixir dripped slowly into a round-bottom flask, the kind used for performing chemical reactions. As soon as the filtration was complete, Princess Grendelin sealed the flask with a glass stopper and tied a shiny red ribbon around its neck. The flask of hard apple cider was a Christmas gift for Sir Rubik. Princess Grendelin thought he might enjoy it even more than pumpkin ale.

"Think of the devil!" she screeched, as she spotted a cardboard box dangling in mid-air in the ladder shaft.

She hurried over, freed the box from its supporting ropes, and peered inside to examine the contents. She squealed at the sight of the golden brown, perfectly roasted turkey resting in its pan.

"What do you think?" asked Sir Rubik, stepping triumphantly onto the second floor landing.

"It's beautiful!" praised the Princess, "I can't wait to eat it!" she chomped at the opening of the box.

"That's not very lady-like," Sir Rubik admonished the Princess.

"I am the Princess, and I shall decide what is and what isn't lady-like in my domain, dear Sir!" retorted the Princess. "Here, taste the sauce! How is it? Too salty? Not salty enough? Too much garlic? Not enough meat? What do you think? Say something!"

Sir Rubik failed to respond through the torrent of sauce that Princess Grendelin poured into his open mouth. He sputtered as the delicious concoction slid down the wrong tube. He hacked it up into the right tube and gave the Princess a big thumbs-up of approval. It tasted almost as good as his mother's homemade spaghetti meat sauce.

The Protectors of the Realm exchanged Christmas gifts before settling down to their Yuletide meal.

Sir Rubik accepted his set of homemade spirits with aplomb befitting the noblest of knights. There was a round-bottom flask of apple cider, a volumetric flask of pumpkin ale, and an Erlenmeyer flask of raspberry cordial - all topped with iridescent glass stoppers and decorated with ribbons in festive colors.

Princess Grendelin accepted her set of hand-blown glass pens with delight befitting the flightiest of princesses. Each of the delicate glass pens was unique in its swirls and grooves, and each held a lovely color of metallic ink - red, green, and gold, just like the ribbons that she had chosen to adorn her flasks of liquor.

The Princess twirled about with her new pens in their velvet box, sending Sir Rubik into an uncontrollable bout of blushing. He had spent a good chunk of his spare time sculpting those pens under the watchful eyes of Larry, the proprietor of the Chemistry Department Glass Shop. Larry had interrogated him about why he was making the pens and who he was making the pens for. He had brushed off all of Larry's insinuations that he was the reincarnation of Bluebeard, who kept a secret wife or girlfriend locked up in a dark cellar somewhere.

Sir Rubik blushed again as the Princess took his arm and guided him into a beanbag on the floor. He stared, mouth watering, as she loaded their Christmas feast onto the spool that served as a dining table. There was roast turkey, spaghetti with meat sauce, mashed potatoes with gravy, buttery corn on the cob, and Rice Krispies treats in different flavors - original, chocolate, and butterscotch. Best of all, there was not a single green vegetable to be seen.

While Princess Grendelin carved the turkey, Sir Rubik inserted his videotape of "Dead Alive" into the VCR. He was about to hit "Play" when the sharp blade of a steak knife appeared over his wrist. He snarled at the wielder and retreated back into his seat.

Princess Grendelin popped the first of three Disney movies into the VCR. They would watch "The Little Mermaid", then "Beauty and the Beast", then "Aladdin". These movies were completely devoid of zombie ears falling into bowls of custard, zombie entrails crawling across the floor, and zombie babies being ground up in blenders.

* * *

Spencer brushed the white hairs of his fake mustache away from his mouth before chugging the remainder of his soda. He had assumed the guise of an eccentric old man for his journey back to Las Vegas. It was Winter Break, and he looked forward to spending two whole weeks with his mother at home.

He had decided that he needed a disguise after his Thanksgiving trip home. A kindly middle-aged woman, who had sat next to him on the flight from LA, had refused to leave him alone until his mother arrived to pick him up at the airport. Diana had been two hours late, which gave the woman plenty of time to interrogate Spencer about his parents. When she had finally arrived, Diana had parked the car on the sidewalk and attracted the attention of Airport Security. The woman had berated her in a shrill voice and threatened to call Child Protective Services. Spencer understood that the woman meant well, but he would rather live with his mother in a mental institution than be taken away from her to become a Ward of the State.

All of his mother's friends and colleagues, the ones who took turns checking on her while he was away at college, understood their situation and refrained from reporting them to Social Services. He had dazzled them with his amazing intellect and boyish charm every time they had come to visit. He suspected that he had also intimidated them, the same way that he had intimidated his father and driven him away from home.

Spencer walked through the airport terminal in his Hawaiian shirt, tie-dyed jacket, and knee-length lederhosen. Princess Grendelin had lent him the clothing from her collection of strange costumes. His long white beard hung down the front of his shirt and puffed up in the breeze of passersby. A large sombrero covered his hair. Every time he moved, the sombrero tinkled with the sound of Christmas bells dangling from its brim.

The Princess had also lent him a long white wig to match his long white beard, but he had lost it in a fiery accident the night before. He had tossed the wig over the firepot at the same time that one of his housemates had tossed sawdust over the firepot. The sawdust had caught fire from the flames of the firepot, and the wig had caught fire from the flames of the sawdust. Everyone had laughed at him - nay, with him - as he had stroked the charred remnants of his beautiful wig.

Spencer exited the terminal and hailed a cab to take him home. He had told his mother that he was arriving a day later than his actual flight, so she wouldn't have to pick him up at the airport. He could make his own way home just fine, especially now that he had a disguise.

He found it amusing that a thirteen-year-old boy traveling alone would be noticed by everyone, but that a circus freak walking around with a hobo stick would be noticed by no one. He rationalized it as the nature of Las Vegas.

* * *

Penelope spent Christmas Day hacking into the personnel files of current and former Caltech professors. She wasn't looking for anything in particular, but the system had been so easy to infiltrate that it was like an invitation to the curious hacker. She browsed through the documents, snickering at some of the entries.

Most of the professors were as innocent and dorky as they appeared, but a few of them had engaged in skirmishes outside the law and survived to conceal the tale.

One engineering professor had been ticketed for driving his self-built transformer car down the middle of the street during rush hour. Another had been investigated for stealing the Oscar statuettes from the Academy Awards and replacing them with Chia Pets of Looney Tunes characters. Penelope was enraged that he had not included Pepe Le Pew. Yet another professor had been arrested during his college days for distributing psychedelic mushrooms to moviegoers in downtown Pasadena. He had explained to the police that he was merely helping the moviegoers improve their moviegoing experience. Penelope noted that he had been a Techer, a Darb from Dabney House, just like her. She was not at all surprised by his choice of hobby.

None of the perpetrators had been prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. They had gotten off scot free or with a nominal fine. Apparently, the judges had been impressed with the upstanding nature of their professional pursuits.

Penelope wondered what would happen to her if the authorities ever caught her hacking into their systems. She didn't want to end up in prison on computer felony fraud counts.

She wasn't worried about the Caltech authorities. They wouldn't care who was hacking into their systems, as long as none of their data was altered or deleted. They might engage in a game of Cat-and-Mouse with the hacker, but only for entertainment purposes.

The government was another matter.

Penelope itched to worm her way into government computer systems. Her hacking skills were almost up to the task.

She wanted to know what kinds of secrets the government hid from the public, and what kinds of lies they told the public to cover up their misdeeds. She was obsessed with Area 51, but she planned to hold off on that until she uncovered the truth about the JFK assasination. That had been the most shocking event of her parents' youth. Her mom and stepdad had entertained a whole slew of conspiracy theories around it, and she wanted to uncover the truth to honor their memory.

Penelope sniffled and blinked. She spun her chair around to face the computer screen once again.

She closed down the personnel files and opened up a set of graphics files. They were driver's license templates from the California Department of Motor Vehicles.

First, she made a fake driver's license for herself, proclaiming her month and year of birth to be January 1974 when in fact it was January 1976. Then, she made a fake driver's license for her noblest Knight, proclaiming his month and year of birth to be October 1976 when in fact it was October 1981.

She smiled at the fake names and fake birthdates upon the templates. She would print them out and laminate them later. She couldn't wait for Sir Rubik to return from Winter Break, so she could show him his rapid age progression. He had told her about the Thanksgiving incident, when a busybody hag had latched onto him at the airport and berated his mother for picking him up two hours late.

"Why was his mother so late?" she wondered. "Poor Rube, he must have been so worried."

Penelope understood the feeling. She closed her eyes and recalled the times when she had waited for her parents to pick her up - after school, after ballet, at summer camp, at the airport. Waiting had always been tedious, but there had always been the simple joy of arrival to make up for it.

Now, she wished that she could wait forever - strolling up and down the Olive Walk, checking her watch every few minutes, muttering impatiently under her breath. Then, maybe nothing would have happened. The drunk driver in the Chevy Suburban would not have plowed into her parents' convertible. The convertible would not have banked sharply onto two wheels, or skidded into the center divider, or flipped over with her parents trapped in their seats.

Penelope had not been at the scene of the accident. She did not know if this sequence of events had occurred, but this was the reel that played itself over and over, sharp and vibrant, every time she closed her eyes.

Alone in The Pit, she was free to scream and scream and scream.

* * *

Nerd speak clarifications

1) Ricketts House alleys

Alleys are just hallways in Ricketts House. Each alley has a name like Crud or Snatch or LD50 (Lethal Dose 50 :). Crud is indeed completely dark and populated by vampires who used to worship the Grateful Dead.

2) Spencer's room

Spencer does not have a roommate. Most of the rooms in the South Houses are singles. There are a few doubles, which are preferred because they are much bigger than the tiny jail cell-like singles. One grad student saw my room and remarked, "Wow, if I lived here, I would kill myself." Thanks, grad student.

3) Glassware/Glass Shop

Princess Grendelin seems to own a variety of chemistry glassware, probably pilfered from the dreaded Chem 3. The Glass Shop is super cool. They make custom order lab glassware, some of which is really bizarre. I once got a giant piece of glassware the length and width of my legs.

4) Caltech criminals

Some Caltech students have gotten off scot free from their petty crimes simply by telling the judge that they go to Caltech. Clearly, nerds in sweater vests could never be a danger to society.

5) Dead Alive

Awesome zombie movie directed by Peter Jackson, director of Lord of the Rings. More comedy than horror, and very very gory. LOTR is good, but this is much better!


	10. Chapter 10

Disclaimer 1: I do not own Criminal Minds.

Disclaimer 2: I do not own Caltech, although I did go to college there. All characters are fictional, regardless of how much they may resemble actual persons.

Author's Note: The format of this story is unusual. It alternates between 1994-1995 and 2010. I hope the weird format doesn't bother people too much, since I've already got a bunch of chapters written and plan to update regularly. I just need to proofread the chapters before I add them to the story.

Some of the chapters contain quite a bit of nerd speak, but I reserve the right to nerd speak as much as I want in a story about my favorite TV nerds. Nerd speak clarifications may be found at the end of each chapter.

This is my first ever fanfiction. Reading &/ Reviewing are much appreciated. Enjoy!

* * *

Chapter 10

January 2010

Reid leaned back in his seat and put his feet up on the row of seats in front of him. He watched the reels play themselves over and over before his eyes. They were clear and stable, unlike the rest of the lecture hall, which tilted and spun every time he moved his head. He breathed deeply, sucking air past the tight band around his chest, and let the reels take over for awhile.

Princess Grendelin smiled encouragingly at him from the passenger seat of her VW Beetle. He gripped the steering wheel and pressed down on the gas pedal. The car lurched up the hill as he grappled with the stick shift. He wondered why he had agreed to take driving lessons from this particular girl, in this particular car, up this particular hill. How much trouble would they be in if the police caught a thirteen-year-old behind the wheel?

Princess Grendelin peered critically at his face while she applied glitter over his lipstick. She smoothed back a few stray hairs that had escaped his pigtails and adjusted his cardigan over his shoulders. He fidgeted in his Catholic schoolgirl outfit, struggling to recall exactly how she had talked him into entering the Dabney House Drag Competition. She demanded that he practice his lollipop sucking one more time, and he complied without a second thought.

Princess Grendelin wrapped her arms around his waist as he tilted the plastic container lid beneath them. The make-shift sled raced down the hill, spraying up the knee-deep snow on all sides. He wrenched the sled away from its collision course with a yucca plant, and they tumbled sideways out of the flimsy conveyance, their laughs filling the cold mountain air.

"Princess Grendelin!" he remembered.

The name bounced around in his brain, deep in the structures of the limbic system, where the rational cortex held no sway. It had never been associated with reason, and now was not the time for change. It generated a chain of signaling events in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis that led to the production of adrenaline. Adrenaline mobilized the meager energy stores of Spencer Reid's body.

The glucose from the energy stores made its way into his bloodstream, then into his cells. The molecules of glucose encountered molecules of cyanide in the aqueous medium of his body. They reacted to produce a jumble of useless harmless chemicals. The cellular concentration of cyanide remained above the threshold needed to derail the electron transport chain. The cells continued to rip apart molecules of glucose, collecting the fragments and feeding them into the M subunits of lactate dehydrogenase. The M subunits of lactate dehydrogenase continued to drive the ancient fermentative pathways, producing a meager two molecules of ATP for every molecule of glucose consumed. The molecules of ATP continued to sacrifice their terminal phosphate groups, barely powering the primitive and non-primitive functions of Spencer Reid's brain.

Cyanide gas stopped diffusing into the room. As the counter stuck at 100 ppm, Reid's brain switched into the mode that it adopted under intense starvation. That was when it made mistakes.

* * *

"How do you feel?" asked the UnSub.

"Better," Garcia lied, swallowing away the shock of the injection. "Can we please leave now?" she asked wearily.

"I'd rather stay," said the UnSub. "I like it here," he swept his hand over the walls of the control room. "Here with you," he added.

Garcia's head cleared as the injection performed its intended function. "Or maybe that's just the placebo effect," she thought.

Her series of programmable steps did not include an UnSub who wished to stay here and bond with her in this dark little hole.

"Please," she begged, "I don't feel well. Can we go now? Through the hole in the wall? I'll show you a way out through the steam tunnels. No one will be able to catch you."

"I know my way around the steam tunnels," said the UnSub. "I went to college here in the '70s. College, then grad school."

"Oh right, I forgot about that," she answered.

"You know all about the steam tunnels, so you must have gone to college here too, right?" he asked.

"Yeah, I was here in the '90s, but I never graduated."

The UnSub looked at her expectantly, waiting to hear the story of her old failures. There was time now, now that lives had been saved, now that the psychotic murderer in the lecture hall had been subdued. The UnSub had fallen into a harmless orbit rather than a cataclysmic freefall. It was time for him to be melted down and crystallized anew.

"My parents, my mom and stepdad, were killed in a car accident shortly before my sophomore year," Garcia explained. "They were on their way to visit me when a drunk driver hit them on the 110 Freeway. A drunk driver on a Sunday morning! My brothers saw the whole thing from their van, driving behind my parents. I was the only one who wasn't there..."

She trailed off, not knowing why she was divulging such information to a total stranger. She had never talked about it with her friends, neither her friends in the FBI or her friends outside of work. She had never talked about it at the Victim Assistance Center, where she counseled the families of murder victims every weekend. Sometimes, it was easier to share such information with a total stranger than with friends and family, even if the total stranger happened to be a psychotic UnSub in the midst of a hostage situation.

"I'm so sorry," he said gently.

His tone was sincere. He felt empathy for her. He paused, as if debating something in his own mind.

"I dropped out of school after my parents were killed," Garcia continued. "I lived in an underground pit in Arms. I spent all my time learning to code, and when I had gotten really good at coding, I started hacking into government computer systems for fun. The FBI noticed me, traced me, caught me. They offered me a job. I had no choice but to accept it for fear of landing in prison."

"I know how you feel," said the UnSub, "My wife and son..."

His voice faltered. He had finished his internal debate. She was going to hear his sob story.

"My wife and son were murdered, shot in a carjacking, twenty years ago today. I wasn't there. I was flying home from a conference in New York, and my in-laws met me at the airport. I knew something was wrong as soon as I saw them."

Tears formed in his eyes, balanced on his lower eyelids, dropped into his lap.

Garcia leaned forwards, offering her handcuffed hands for him to hold. She felt empathy for him. He seemed as pathetic as herself, reaching out to a total stranger after years of isolation.

At the moment, the greatest difference between them was that the UnSub considered Garcia to be his ally, while Garcia considered the UnSub to be her adversary. She patted his palm, urging him to go on, encouraging him to continue, distracting him from the jiggling doorknob where Reid was picking the lock outside the control room.

* * *

Reid jiggled the doorknob as quietly as he could while he picked the lock with the lock-picking kit that he carried around in his bag at all times. He was a magician, so the task should have been easy in his nimble fingers.

It was not easy today. His hands refused to hold still. His fingers shook, and he found it difficult to grip anything between the numbing digits. His brain threatened to shut down, but he was not concerned, because it had already come up with a plan for escaping the room alive.

Through the fog of his blurry vision, Reid could see a series of programmable steps leading to the happy ending that he fervently believed in. They composed the final act of his psychodrama.

The only way to divert the UnSub from his fight response was to activate his flight response. He required a sizable shock to kick him out of battle. Reid nominated himself.

* * *

"My wife," continued the UnSub. "She was an assistant professor here, just like me. She was a Techer too. We met during Freshman Orientation, started dating right before Finals Week, took the same courses and worked in the same lab for four years in college, stayed in the same department for grad school. We were two of those infamous 'lifers' you might have heard about."

He smiled, recalling the joyful times of his youth. Garcia felt another wave of empathy. She smiled as well, recalling the joyful times of her own youth.

"I was the biggest dork you ever saw, even by Tech standards," said the UnSub. "You should've seen my clothes, my glasses, my pocket protector," he laughed. "Before I met Liz, I could never have imagined myself finding love, being happy, sharing my life with a woman. I loved her so much. She was the best friend I ever had."

"My son," he sniffled. "He was just a little boy when he was killed. He was so smart. Started kindergarten at four, skipped third grade, was always ahead of all the older kids. He wanted to be just like his mommy and daddy - go to Tech, study everything under the sun, launch rockets and cure diseases in the same breath."

He sobbed into his hands, the sound of his crying drowning out the sound of the doorknob turning. He didn't notice the third person who joined them in the control room.

Reid stumbled unsteadily into the control room. His eyes snapped into and out of focus, as if he were missing his black horn-rimmed glasses.

Without a word, he smacked the UnSub over the head with his cane. The UnSub crumpled to a heap on the floor, crying in equal parts pain and grief. Reid kicked him a few times with his good leg before turning his attention to Garcia's handcuffs. He struggled to recall the plan that he had brought into battle.

The handcuffs snapped apart with a satisfying click. Garcia hopped up from her chair and rubbed her bruised wrists. She looked down to see Reid sitting on the floor, leaning his head against a desk drawer, his eyes wandering, his lips curving into a smile.

"Hi," he waved awkwardly, "My name is Spencer Reid. I'm a freshman, and I'm twelve years old," he smiled nervously, as if uncertain of his reception.

He remembered that there was something he wanted someone to do, but he couldn't remember what the thing was or who the person was. All he could see, besides the cloud of messy blonde hair hanging over him, were the digits pulsating over the chambers of his revolver.

Garcia watched in slow motion horror as the UnSub lifted himself onto his arms, reached towards Reid's belt, and snatched Reid's gun out of its holster. He placed the barrel over Reid's forehead and squeezed the trigger. He had become a murderer.

* * *

"Let go of me!" screamed Garcia.

She tried to twist her way out of the UnSub's grasp. She thrashed her body back and forth, trying to bring him down with her weight. She kicked backwards with the sharp points of her high heels, aiming for his shins.

The UnSub wasn't exactly the fighting type, but he was too strong for her. He dragged her down the stairs to the front of the lecture hall. He blocked her way every time she tried to dart back up the stairs.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" he shouted. "I'm trying to help you! We need to get out of here!"

He shoved her through the open doorway of the prep room and maneuvered her towards the hole in the wall. She scratched at his face and arms with her long nails.

She scanned the lab benches for a weapon. A piece of glassware would suffice - a flask, a buret, a graduated cylinder, even a stirring rod. She could use it to stab him in the eye, or stick it up his nose and jiggle it around in his brain.

Her hands twitched with the impulse to slash his throat. She looked around the prep room for a box of razor blades. Perhaps she could garrote him with aluminum wire instead, if only she could shake off the dizziness that hit her every time she moved her head.

The empathy that she had felt for the UnSub, the empathy arising from their common tragedies, had vanished in a puff of cyanide the moment he had squeezed the trigger against Reid's forehead. She hated him now.

"Go!" yelled the UnSub, indicating the hole in the wall, "Get in there! We don't have much time!"

He waved Reid's gun towards the hole. He grabbed her arms to pull her down to the floor.

"What are you waiting for?" he screamed. "We have to get away from the cyanide! It's flooding the room! Do you want to die here?"

He pointed the gun at her forehead, his hands shaking, his face begging her to obey.

Garcia complied. She had no choice but to lie down on the floor and begin skooching her way through the narrow coffin-like passage.

Reid and Garcia had titrated the UnSub to his endpoint. By their calculations, the UnSub contained four clicks of the trigger. There was a fifth click remaining, which they could use later, if they needed, to titrate him again.

The revolver had not fired when the UnSub had squeezed the trigger at Reid, which meant that the bullet was now aligned with the barrel of the six-shooter.

* * *

Reid wandered down the stairs, stopping every now and then to steady himself on the rows of seats. He yawned, struggling to stay awake. He wanted candy, but he couldn't find his messenger bag.

"Lecture was even more boring than usual today," he thought. "I didn't come to Tech to watch digits scrolling up on a counter."

He looked at the blackboard, admiring the elegant chalk drawings upon them.

"Oh well, I guess it wasn't a total loss. At least I got to draw up schematics for my pranks. Pre-Frosh Weekend is coming up, so I should probably start working on that wall of duct tape."

He stopped at the front of the lecture hall, bracing himself against the lab bench. He changed his mind, deciding that what he really wanted was coffee. For coffee, he would have to exit the lecture hall.

The cyanide counter scrolled up in a dizzying stall. Visible clouds of gas emanated from the emergency shower, emergency eyewash, and emergency sprinklers at the front and back of the room. The pipes of the emergency safety system shook as cyanide gas was pumped through them at high pressure.

Clicking the button to flood the room with cyanide had been strangely satisfying for Reid, after all this time of preventing the UnSub from doing the very same thing.

The UnSub had gawked at him, open-mouthed and terrified, after the revolver had failed to fire. The UnSub had tried and failed to kill him, which meant that it was time to try again, fail again, fail better.

Failure was the color of the day. Even Reid had failed.

He had failed to remember that he was a murderer.

Murder was not within the realm of Spencer Reid, Caltech freshman, twelve years old. It was only within the realm of Dr. Spencer Reid, FBI agent, twenty-eight years old.

The boy held sway over the man. Letting him do so was the man's mistake.

In the world of the boy, the bad man needed a kick in the pants to flee the lecture hall. In the world of the boy, they could all walk out of here together. The boy believed in happy endings.

In the world of the man, the bad man needed a bullet to the forehead. In the world of the man, they could not walk out of here together. The man did not believe in endings.

In the end, it was the boy who had turned up the cyanide. He had given the bad man a kick in the pants. Unfortunately, he had not counted on the bad man dragging the girl down the stairs with him, trying to protect her from her dangerous psychotic friend.

The boy had wandered down the stairs of the lecture hall, searching for candy. At some point in his journey, the sweetness of candy had been replaced by the bitterness of coffee, and the boy had turned back into the man.

The man limped into the prep room, just in time to see a pair of legs disappear through a hole in the wall. The sight bothered him immensely. He tried to remember why it bothered him, but his brain refused to process his repeated requests. It had shut down for the day.

The only thing that he focused on was the creature hovering over the passage. He needed to remove the creature before it crawled into the passage. The pair of legs, whoever they belonged to, depended on him.

* * *

Garcia sat up on the dusty floor, checking above and behind for hazardous obstructions before pulling her legs out of the passage. She peered through the hole on her hands and knees, just in time to see the UnSub snap his head back as a pair of hands clamped down over his throat. The hands pressed into his carotid arteries. He struggled to breathe through a constricted windpipe.

The hands released his throat as the UnSub twisted and thrashed and kicked. He was too strong for the long skinny fingers.

A small object fell out of the UnSub's grasp and clattered across the floor of the prep room, away from the passage. The UnSub fell back against the hole as a lanky figure crawled onto his feet, scurried towards the object, and pinned it under his body. The lanky figure struggled to flip over onto his back, but the UnSub tackled him from behind. The UnSub pinned him to the floor and smashed a 500-mL Erlenmeyer flask into his skull. The lanky figure never stopped struggling, not even as blood colored the tiles of the floor, not even as projectiles of glass clinked on the ceramic surface, not even as another object rolled with a different timbre, across the floor, through the hole, across the bricks, into a pair of knees.

Garcia waited for the UnSub to pull himself out of the passage before she emptied the sixth chamber into his forehead.

* * *

Reid shied away from the vial of dark red liquid. It glowed in the light of the fluorescent lights overhead. It shook before a cloud of messy blonde hair.

He whimpered as a needle pricked his skin. He tried to pluck the needle out of his arm, but his hand was slippery with blood.

He swatted weakly at the cloud. It bent over his face, coming into and out of focus in his blurry vision. He was horrified to discover that it had eyes, red-rimmed and rectangular, bugging out of their sockets.

The cloud fell towards him, collapsing into the nook between his collarbone and his chin. It was soft and warm. He nuzzled its wispy locks with his nose and wrapped his arms around the mass of fur. He wiggled into a comfortable position, preparing to settle into a leisurely nap with his soft furry blanket around him, but a smell tugged at his consciousness. It refused to let him sleep. It was a heavenly smell, one of those smells that took the sting out of living.

"Coffee!" he remembered.

Reid braced his hands against the floor and pushed himself up to a sitting position.

* * *

Nerd speak clarifications

1) Limbic system/cortex

These concepts are rather outdated, but fit in with the story. The limbic system contains brain structures associated with emotion, while the cortex is associated with reason. The limbic system contains the amygdala (fear response), hypothalamus (stress response), and hippocampus (long term memory).

2) Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis

A signaling pathway that allows the brain to control the release of stress hormones, such as adrenaline, from the adrenal glands located above the kidneys. Adrenaline has global effects on the body, governs the fight-or-flight response, and mobilizes the body's energy stores for an acute crisis situation.

3) Lactate dehydrogenase

When cells break down glucose, the fragments have two choices. They can go into the citric acid cycle and electron transport chain to be completely burned by oxygen, or they can go into lactate dehydrogenase, an enzyme that converts the fragments into lactic acid, which causes the burning sensation in your legs when you're exercising and your muscles aren't getting enough oxygen. The lactate dehydrogenase route is much less efficient in producing energy (ATP), but Reid has no choice because his electron transport chains are not working. This pathway is also known as fermentation, the waste product being lactic acid for animals and alcohol for yeast.

4) Reid's flashbacks

Will appear in detail in later chapters. An entire chapter is devoted to the Dabney House Drag Competition.

Author's Note: A big thanks to all readers and reviewers! I'm taking a mini hiatus for Labor Day Weekend, so updates will resume on Tuesday, 9/7. Sorry to hiatus on a cliffhanger, but you don't really think Reid and Garcia are going to die after all this, do you?


	11. Chapter 11

Disclaimer 1: I do not own Criminal Minds.

Disclaimer 2: I do not own Caltech, although I did go to college there. All characters are fictional, regardless of how much they may resemble actual persons.

Author's Note: The format of this story is unusual. It alternates between 1994-1995 and 2010. I hope the weird format doesn't bother people too much, since I've already got a bunch of chapters written and plan to update regularly. I just need to proofread the chapters before I add them to the story.

Some of the chapters contain quite a bit of nerd speak, but I reserve the right to nerd speak as much as I want in a story about my favorite TV nerds. Nerd speak clarifications may be found at the end of each chapter.

This is my first ever fanfiction. Reading &/ Reviewing are much appreciated. Enjoy!

* * *

Chapter 11

January 1995

"Tell us the truth, Spender. Do you have a secret girlfriend?" asked Pierre.

"No," said Spencer, assuming the most impassive expression that he could muster in the face of the unexpected question. He shifted his armchair closer to the fireplace and stared into the flames.

"A secret boyfriend?" asked Sarah, her eyes brightening hopefully. She licked her lips in a hungry, almost predatory, manner.

"No!" replied Spencer, wrinkling his nose in disgust.

He continued staring into the fire, locked into its flames, trapped in the circle of seats around it. He wished to flee, but there were too many people in the Ricketts House lounge. They blocked the exits on every side, watching "The Simpsons" as they did every night after dinner. Besides, fleeing would look mighty suspicious after his adamant denials. He would have to stand his ground and fight.

"So, where have you been disappearing to for hours at a time in the middle of the night?" asked Keith.

"Yeah," said Eric, "You're never around when we're looking for you to do our problem sets. I mean, when we're looking for you so we can all do our problem sets together," he corrected himself.

"I'm always around," Spencer insisted. "Last night, we did our physics sets in your room, remember?"

"Yeah," said Sarah, "And we finished before midnight for the first time in recorded history. That was when you disappeared. We went looking for you, because we wanted to go to the Coffeehouse, but we couldn't find you."

"Oh, right," said Spencer, as if he were suddenly remembering something. "I went to mail a letter to my mom in the SAC," he lied. "I write her a letter everyday," he admitted, feigning hesitation at the disclosure. "I don't want her to be lonely at home," he dropped his puppy dog eyes sadly into his lap.

"Awwwwwww," said Pierre, "What a sweet baby boy!"

He reached over with his long ape-like arms and ruffled Spencer's hair.

"If you ever meet my parents, do not, I repeat, do not tell them that you write your mother everyday," said Eric. "They're going to expect me to do the same. It's bad enough as it is. They make me call them every other day to tell them that I'm still alive."

"At least your parents are 3,000 miles away," said Sarah. "My parents showed up at my door last Saturday. It was noon, so I was asleep. When I heard them knocking and calling me from outside the door, I fell out of bed and landed on my bike. Do you know how much it hurts to land on a bike? I was lucky not to be impaled on the handlebars!"

Spencer settled back into his armchair as his friends complained about their parents. He had successfully diverted the conversation away from his midnight trysts with his secret girlfriend.

"She's not your girlfriend!" he reprimanded himself, "You're not having trysts with her! Stop thinking about it like that! It's insane!"

Spencer had not told any of his friends about the girl in the four-story pit, because his instincts told him not to. There was an unspoken understanding between them, that he would never speak of her to anyone else. She would not ask him about the things that he wished to keep to himself, and he would not ask her about why she lived in The Pit, why she only ventured outside after dark or in disguise, why she didn't socialize with anyone except for him. When it came to Princess Grendelin, Sir Rubik's instincts told him to lie, lie, lie.

* * *

In her dream, Princess Grendelin glided over the red-tiled roofs of the South Houses. The large white cloud that carried her across the sky dipped at each of the windows of Ricketts House. So far, none of the small narrow rooms had held any sign of her noblest Knight.

She swallowed painfully into a sore throat. Her head ached, and she decided to rest for a moment on the roof overhanging the first floor. She hovered under a set of open windows.

Through watery eyes, she watched a figure sleeping in its bed. An arm and a leg dangled over the edge of the bunk bed. It was the highest bunk bed that she had ever seen, at least six feet tall, built into the three walls surrounding it in the tiny room. It was more like a platform than a bed.

As she watched, the figure in the bunk bed rolled over, hung at the precipice, and plunged over the side. Princess Grendelin screamed. She felt herself pitch forwards off her cloud - falling, falling, falling until she hit her bedroom floor.

"Ouch, I can't breathe..." came the sound of muffled voice beneath her.

The Princess pulled herself to her feet. Her noblest Knight lay flat on the floor, red-faced and wheezing, utterly disoriented by their tumble out of bed. They sneezed in unison.

"Did we just fall out of bed?" asked Sir Rubik.

"I believe so," replied the Princess, "You rolled around too much and kicked us out."

"You're the one who landed on top of me," Sir Rubik retorted.

"Only because we somersaulted over the edge," explained the Princess.

Sir Rubik crawled onto his hands and knees and flipped himself back onto the bed. Princess Grendelin was taken aback by his agility. She flopped down next to him, causing the mattress to creak under their combined weight.

"I warned you," said Sir Rubik. "I'm like Typhoid Mary. I'm a super spreader. Don't blame me for getting the flu! I told you I was contagious, but you insisted that I come down over the weekend."

"Oh, dear Rube, how could I ever blame you?" asked the Princess. "What's a measly little virus anyway? It's not that bad. Sometimes, you just need to lie down and take it easy for awhile."

She took a swig from a bottle of NyQuil and passed the bottle to Rube. Rube took a larger swig before setting the bottle down on a bedside spool.

"I like NyQuil," he declared, "It's almost as good as pumpkin ale."

Princess Grendelin reached across Sir Rubik and snatched the bottle of NyQuil off the spool. She set it down on the floor beside the bed, wagging her finger at Sir Rubik, warning him to stay away from the intoxicating elixir until their next allotted dose.

"Tell me a story," she demanded.

She burrowed into the covers and folded her hands over her stomach. Sir Rubik did the same, his curly brown hair brushing against her shoulders as he snuggled deeper into the sheets. He cleared his throat to speak.

"Once upon a time, in an old treehouse in a forested glen, there lived a family of crime-fighters who watched over the world and kept it safe from evil."

"They were a family of seven - three brothers, three sisters, and an eccentric old uncle. Every time the call came, the family would pack into their tank, and the uncle would set the destinator. Only he could set the destinator, because he was one who had invented the tank. The tank would disappear in a puff of smoke and reappear at its desired destination."

"A tank, a wormhole-traversing tank?" asked the Princess, excited by the prospect.

"A wormhole-traversing tank," Sir Rubik confirmed, "Their very own wormhole-traversing tank..."

"But how did they decide where to go?" asked the Princess.

"That was the job of the youngest sister," explained Sir Rubik. "She kept a herd of butterflies in the room that she shared with her middle sister, the one who shared her hair of spun gold. Their oldest sister had a room of her own, and her locks were raven, the kind that glinted violet in the light of the sun."

"Every night, the butterflies would venture out into the world beyond the glen. Every morning, they would return, fluttering with news of all the ills that had taken place overnight. The youngest sister would question the butterflies in the secret language that only she could speak, and she would choose one of their stories to tell. The family would gather at a big round table in the kitchen to listen to her story over breakfast."

"She spoke a secret language?" asked the Princess, "A secret butterfly language?"

"Indeed," replied Sir Rubik, "It was a natural-born talent of hers. They were of the same kind, she and the butterflies - light, airy, delicate. Their beauty gave solace to the family in the midst of death and decay."

"What about the other sisters? Did they speak secret languages too?" asked the Princess.

"The oldest sister spoke many languages, but none were secret. The middle sister was shy around people. She spoke only to her family and her gadgets. She spoke a mysterious binary language that had taken many years to master."

"And the brothers? What were they like?"

"The oldest brother was the leader of the family. He was stern but fair, strong in body and strong in mind. The middle brother was brave and charming. He attracted the attention of all the nymphs who lived in the wood. He liked to tease his youngest brother, who was small and skinny and had a penchant for getting into trouble."

"What kind of trouble?" asked the Princess.

"Deep dangerous trouble," said Sir Rubik. "The youngest brother had a lot of book knowledge, but not a lot of common sense. Thankfully, he was a magician as well as a crime-fighter. He usually got himself out of trouble just as quickly as he got himself into trouble."

Sir Rubik paused, waiting for the Princess to chirp in with another question. She was quiet, and he continued.

"It was whispered door to door in the villages surrounding the glen that the family was not a natural family at all. It was said that they had been brought together by the eccentric old uncle and his eccentric old friend many years ago. The brothers and sisters were rumored to be Children of the Shadow, tortured souls who had suffered untold miseries in their youth and now desired nothing more than to protect the young and innocent from harm."

"The villagers respected the family and its occupation, but they also suspected that the family's adventures took a hefty toll upon its members. The uncle's eccentric old friend, the one with the brash exterior and fragile interior, had suddenly left the family several years ago. He had fought a mighty foe, and he had lost. There had been another sister, but she had lost her way during an adventure. She had been banished to the world beyond the glen."

"Where are they now?" asked Princess Grendelin, "The ones who left the family?"

"No one knows, not even the family," replied Sir Rubik, "I suppose they have moved on in search of their own happy endings."

"This is the story of the family as they are today," he continued. "I speak now of their latest adventure together, of a time when a bad man with rotting yellow teeth terrorized a great city under cover of darkness..."

* * *

In his dream, Spencer leaned back against the rough bark of an ancient oak tree. He waved his wand in the air, conjuring up a ring of puffy clouds that twirled around the tree trunk before settling gently onto the dewy grass. The clouds smelled sweet, like cotton candy. They were sure to attract the attention of his heart's desire.

She floated in upon the southerly breeze, soft and warm as always. She petted the cooing clouds, and their colors rubbed off on her milky white hands. She wiped her hands on her gown, not caring a bit about the colors that stained its silky ruffles.

Spencer offered her his hand. He was a bit surprised when she took hold of it. He was even more surprised when she took hold of his other hand as well, the hand holding the wand. She swung his hand back and forth in the air, laughing as silver sparks flew out the tip of the wand.

The clouds responded to the Magician's incantation. They flew up from their stations on the grass and bunched together to form a large white cloud that hovered at his knees.

He fell backwards onto the cloud, pulling her down with him as the cloud lifted up into the clear blue sky. It soared over red-tiled roofs and dipped over wooded glens, but Spencer ignored the scenery below. He was enthralled with the kiss that she bestowed upon him. The kiss was soft and warm, just like her. It felt like nothing he had ever felt before.

Spencer awoke in a sweaty daze. He was no longer feverish, thanks to the bottle of NyQuil that he had stolen from Princess Grendelin before leaving The Pit.

He rolled over onto his side and sputtered into the sheets. He, too, had finally hit puberty.

* * *

Penelope tapped a pair of fake driver's licenses against the surface of her desk. She pondered the fake names and fake birthdates upon them. Fake selves with real faces stared up at her from the laminated cards.

Her fake self was twenty-one, which was two years older than her real age. She could easily pass for twenty-one.

His fake self was eighteen, which was five years older than his real age. There was no way he could pass for eighteen.

Penelope smiled at herself. Here she was, nineteen years old, living in a four-story pit, playing with a little boy who was younger than her youngest brothers.

Her smile did not know what to make of itself. It did not know if it was a smile of pleasure or pain.

In ten years, she would be old, nearly thirty. She did not know if she would be living in The Pit, but she did know that he wouldn't be around to play with her. He would still be young, twenty-three, and he would be going about with his exciting life in his exciting genius.

In fifteen years, she would be thirty-four, ancient and decrepit, suffering from a case of rickets caused by years of living in The Pit. He would still be young, twenty-eight, and he would be finding love and being happy with the object of his heart's desire.

The real bond between the fake selves, so strong today, would pull apart and stretch like taffy as the years passed. In ten years, in fifteen years, Penelope would be well and whole and herself again. She would have a job, and friends, and brothers, and an object of her own heart's desire. Everyday, she would lose another piece of The Pit, until one day, she would twirl about under the mid-day sun, and she would not remember why she cherished the daily ritual. The mid-day sun would melt the shreds of taffy, shreds like cobwebs that dangled in the air, unnoticed until an unfortunate interloper stepped into the silky strands.

Princess Grendelin would be buried, when she was no longer needed, and Sir Rubik, who deserved better, would be buried along with her. In life, everything came with a cost, and this would have to be the price of Penelope's healing. As for the boy in the sun-lit world above, he was not broken, so he would not have to be healed.

Penelope sighed and took a swig of NyQuil. She was running low on NyQuil. She remembered buying two bottles at the grocery store, but she couldn't find the unopened bottle anywhere within her domain.

She leaned back in her swivel chair and ceased her contemplations of fake selves and real selves, of fantasy, reality, and future.

At the moment, she was content. She had only the sweetest purest thing on Earth and in Heaven - the unconditional love of a child.

* * *

Nerd speak clarifications

1) Typhoid Mary/super spreaders

In an outbreak of infectious disease, super spreaders are individuals who can spread the disease to a large number of people. Super spreaders have been identified from the SARS outbreak in Asia. Typhoid Mary was an early example who spread typhoid fever to more than 50 people while she remained healthy herself.


	12. Chapter 12

Disclaimer 1: I do not own Criminal Minds.

Disclaimer 2: I do not own Caltech, although I did go to college there. All characters are fictional, regardless of how much they may resemble actual persons.

Author's Note: The format of this story is unusual. It alternates between 1994-1995 and 2010. I hope the weird format doesn't bother people too much, since I've already got a bunch of chapters written and plan to update regularly. I just need to proofread the chapters before I add them to the story.

Some of the chapters contain quite a bit of nerd speak, but I reserve the right to nerd speak as much as I want in a story about my favorite TV nerds. Nerd speak clarifications may be found at the end of each chapter.

This is my first ever fanfiction. Reading &/ Reviewing are much appreciated. Enjoy!

* * *

Chapter 12

January 2010

Garcia heard her head hit the floor with a loud thunk. There was a microphone tangled up in her hair, and it amplified the sound, as it did another.

"Princess!" whispered a voice.

"Princess!" the voice whispered urgently.

Garcia ignored the voice and tried to go back to sleep. It was calling someone else. It wasn't calling her, because she wasn't a princess.

"Princess!" the voice persisted.

"Princess!" the voice annoyed her.

Garcia wondered if it knew any other words. She was bored with "princess".

Then, the singing started.

"I, I wish you could swim  
Like the dolphins  
Like dolphins can swim  
Though nothing  
Nothing will keep us together  
We can beat them  
For ever and ever  
Oh we can be heroes  
Just for one day..."

The singing was horrible. The voice was screechy and scratchy. It tripped over the lyrics, and it couldn't carry a tune, but it wouldn't stop.

"I, I will be king  
And you  
You will be queen  
Though nothing  
Will drive them away  
We can be heroes  
Just for one day  
We can be us  
Just for one day..."

Garcia gave up. She couldn't resist the singing. It was both horrible and irresistible. She would never be able to un-hear it, and she didn't particularly want to.

Garcia opened her eyes to see Reid looking down at her.

"You wanna go to Starbuck's?" he asked.

"Sure!" she answered.

She pushed herself up from the floor. He pulled her up in the same direction. The smell of coffee filled the air, taking the sting out of living.

Reid gestured towards a hole in the wall. Garcia remembered crawling through the hole, more than once, but she couldn't remember why she had done it. Right now, the trip to Starbuck's was the only thing on her mind.

"Come on, Reid," she nudged him. "We have to go now! Starbuck's is shutting down for fumigation. We have to hurry if we're going to get coffee before it closes for the weekend."

Reid stared at her, then at the hole, then at her again. He frowned unhappily. He looked like Hell. His hair was matted with blood that dripped out of an indefinite head wound within the strands. The wound dripped slowly. Garcia wondered how much blood a human head could hold. She reminded herself to ask Reid, but not until they had refreshed themselves with coffee.

The passage was wider and less coffin-like than she remembered. It only took a few seconds to skooch through the passage. It was a trick of the mind that venturing into unknown territory always seemed to take ten times as long as returning through known territory. Garcia peered through the hole on her hands and knees, waving at Reid to do the same.

He peered uncertainly through the hole.

"It's dark," he complained.

"Your Maglite," she pointed at the keychain clipped to his belt. "Give it to me," she ordered.

He unclipped the Maglite from his keychain and tossed it through the passage. She flicked it on and shone the light through the hole.

"How about now?" she asked.

"Better," he gulped.

"Come on, Rube," she reassured him. "It's like climbing the ladder into The Pit, except much shorter. If you can climb the ladder, you can wiggle through this hole. It'll only take a few seconds," she waved the beam in circles.

"If you say so," he answered, temporarily blinded by the beam of a flashlight pointed directly at him.

The circle of light bounced away from his face and began sweeping itself over the surface of the passage. It carved out a path of light for him to follow.

Reid lay down on his back and began skooching his way through the passage. Garcia recalled the ending scene of "Dead Alive", when the zombie body parts had been processed through household appliances, when Lionel's zombie mother had blown up to the size of a house and re-birthed him from her zombie womb, fully formed, like Athena from the head of Zeus, except not like that at all.

She felt a tapping against her knees, a good excuse to expel the horrifying image from her mind. A set of long skinny fingers tapped at her, making her knees twitch the way they twitched under a physician's hammer. She pulled the lanky figure to a half-standing position, and she bent over with him, resting with her hands on her knees, waiting for the burning in her muscles to ease up.

Here, in the steam tunnels, the air was warm, humid, and musty, and they, the girl and the boy, were loathe to leave it. They looked down at the dead body together.

"Who is he?" asked Reid.

"I don't know," Garcia replied.

"Is he dead?" asked Reid.

"I think so," Garcia replied.

"Was he bad?" asked Reid.

"I don't think so," Garcia replied.

"Who killed him?" asked Reid.

"I don't know," Garcia replied.

"Was he bad, the one who killed him?" asked Reid.

"I don't think so," Garcia replied.

She poked at the small figure with her index finger. She drew her hand away, scared to touch a corpse with a gruesome head wound. Whoever had shot the man had been brutal about it, but she was sure that he had not been bad. She was sure that he would have been sorry, would have felt empathy for his victim if he had been given the chance.

Garcia felt a spot of pressure impinging upon her forehead. She rubbed at the spot, but it persisted. The rubbing made it worse, made her feel the white hot bullet tearing through the tenuous layers of flesh - ectoderm, mesoderm, endoderm.

Reid rubbed at the spot of pressure over Garcia's forehead. He didn't know why he was rubbing her forehead, but he knew that somewhere along the line, he had a mistake and she had paid a price for it.

They sat on the dirty floor of the steam tunnels, breathing in the fresh air enveloping the cooling corpse, contemplating their successes and failures, until the SWAT team appeared. Semi-automatic weapons shifted in and out of focus in their blurry vision, the barrels intensifying the spots of pressure over their foreheads. They glanced at each other and reached an unanimous decision.

It was time to take a leisurely nap. Not even Starbuck's, not even David Bowie, could do a thing to wake them.

* * *

Garcia waited for the nurse to disappear out the door of her hospital room before setting to work on her handcuffs. She wasn't waiting around for Detective Kim to release her from these damned handcuffs. She had spent way too much time in handcuffs today.

"Or was that yesterday?" she wondered.

Orange light shone through the window of her room, so she guessed that it was the day after the Great Cyanide Siege of 2010.

The handcuffs snapped apart in the seasoned fingers of a lock-picking expert. They were easy to pick, now that one of her hands was free. She placed the used paperclip on the bedside table and stood up on the bed.

"Not tall enough," she muttered.

She sat back down and pressed a button to raise the bed up to its full height. Once raised, the bed served as a platform for her to climb into Hyperspace - the space between the ceiling and the floor above.

Garcia poked her head into the dark pipe-lined interior of Hyperspace, mustering her strength. With a kick and a lunge, she lifted herself through the hole of the discarded ceiling panel. Hyperspace in a hospital was much more spacious than Hyperspace in the South Houses. There were pipes and cables everywhere, but they ran in tidy bundles rather than chaotic jumbles with live wires hanging out of torn insulation. She only had to hunch over slightly as she tiptoed in Hospital Hyperspace.

She edged along a clear corridor between the pipes that carried oxygen and water into each room. She avoided putting her full weight on any ceiling panels, lest she fall through them into the room below. The corridor stretched in both directions, the pipes entering and exiting the rooms in a regular pattern.

Garcia wasn't sure which direction to take. She guessed that she and Reid would be kept in adjoining rooms, so it was easier for the police officers to stand guard over two of the three psychotic hostage-takers from Gates Lecture Hall.

"What if he's not here at all?" the thought suddenly struck her, "What if he didn't make it out?"

Her heart thumped against her chest. Her breathing ripped into shreds. It was the first time she had considered the possibility.

"Garcia!" whispered a voice near her foot. "You're standing on my hand!" the voice whispered urgently.

Garcia jerked her foot off the skinny hand clutching at the floor of Hyperspace. Her heart settled back into a healthy rhythm. Her breathing evened out.

The Princess grinned at her noblest Knight as he grinned back at her through a hole in the ceiling of his hospital room.

* * *

"How do you feel?" Reid asked Garcia. They perched on the floor of Hyperspace, their legs dangling out the hole in the ceiling.

"Pretty good, all things considered," she replied. "And yourself, dear Sir?" she asked shyly.

"I believe the term is peachy perfection, dear Princess," he answered, imitating her everyday pattern of speech. "Cyanide poisoning is a classic case of easy come, easy go," he explained, "Once you get the antidote and breathe in fresh air, your body recovers pretty quickly. There won't be any lasting ill effects, except some occasional shortness of breath over the next few weeks. We did breathe in a huge dose."

He was about to launch into a monologue on the mechanism of cyanide detoxification when Garcia clamped his lips shut in her fingers.

"How did we get out of there, Reid?" she asked, her tone turning serious. "I don't remember anything beyond injecting you with that vial of hydroxo...whatever. Sorry about those," she added, pointing at the multiple puncture marks on his arm where she had repeatedly stuck the needle without hitting a vein.

"Sorry?" asked Reid incredulously, "You saved my life in there, Garcia."

"Actually," he continued, "I don't remember how we got out either. The last thing I remember is wanting coffee really really badly. Even the cyanide gas smelled like coffee."

"I remember something about coffee too!" Garcia exclaimed. "We were going to Starbuck's! David Bowie was going to be there for a concert. Then, we were going to help the staff fumigate the place."

"Really?" Reid asked. "I don't remember anything about fumigation. And who's David Bowie? All I remember is wanting coffee, then something hit me on the head, then I wanted coffee again. And something fell on top of me...before the second time I wanted coffee..."

"Oh, that was you," he realized. "You have a bad habit of doing that, you know. You would always fall on top of me whenever we fell out of your horrible little bed in The Pit," he teased. "Lucky for you, you always had bottles of NyQuil lying around The Pit. I stole a bottle once, when I was too lazy to go to the store myself," he admitted.

"I knew it!" Garcia squeaked. "I thought I was going crazy when I couldn't find it!"

"The UnSub was the one who hit you on the head," she revealed. "He hit you on the head with an Erlenmeyer flask."

Reid gasped in shock. He patted at the bandage over his head wound. He had waited his whole life for this day to come, the day his beloved lab equipment turned against him.

"Which one?" he asked.

"500 mL," she answered.

"Good thing it wasn't the 1-Liter," he sighed. "The glass of the 1-Liter Erlenmeyer flask is twice as thick. Larry told me all about glassware specifications, when I worked at the Chemistry Department Glass Shop."

"I remember," Garcia smiled.

"What happened to the UnSub?" Reid suddenly remembered.

"I, uh, I shot him," Garcia replied. "With your revolver, with the bullet in the last chamber. He came through the passage after hitting you with the flask, and I shot him in the forehead," she rubbed her forehead.

Reid gaped open-mouthed at the unexpected revelation. He brushed his fingers involuntarily over her forehead.

"It's funny," Garcia continued. "You know that I hate guns, right? My parents were hippies, and so was I. They didn't believe in violence of any kind. When I shot that man in the forehead, I didn't feel a thing. Afterwards, when I was crawling back through the passage to find you, I still didn't feel anything. I killed a man, and I felt nothing."

"I'm so sorry," said Reid, looking down at his lap. "I never wanted you to do something like that. The man was pinning me down, and the cyanide was getting to me, and I couldn't lift a finger. I had the gun pinned under me, but I couldn't get it into position to shoot him. Then, he hit me and let go, and the gun rolled away. I'm sorry that you had to shoot him. I should've been the one to do it. I should've done it in the control room, but I was confused. I thought I was twelve, and I didn't want to shoot anyone."

"I thought we could all walk out of there together," he continued. "The UnSub wasn't a murderer to begin with, but I drove him to it, just like..."

"Shhhhhhh," Garcia shushed him. "Listen to me, Reid. You remember James Clark Battle, the man who shot me after I went out on a date with him?"

He nodded.

"JJ shot him through the glass doors at the BAU, remember? That was the first time she had killed anyone. You know what she told me afterwards? She told me that she was only doing whatever it took to protect her family."

"The BAU is my family, Reid," she continued, "It's yours too, isn't it?"

He nodded.

"But you're not the BAU," she sniffled. "You're something else entirely. You...me...The Pit," her voice cracked. "Back when I was living in The Pit, for the nine months that we hung out together...If you hadn't been there, I would've ended up like the UnSub. I had cut everyone off, even my brothers, but I still had you, and for some reason, you were willing to take part in my bizarre little fantasies. I was so screwed up, but for a lot of the time, when we were together, I was happy. Looking back, it seems like a waste of nine months, but it wasn't! It was a good nine months!"

She choked out the words, tears rolling down her cheeks as she shook her head of messy blonde hair. Reid nodded, not daring to lift his head to look at her. He thought about the UnSub, the unknown subject who remained nameless, even after his death. He thought about the girl in The Pit, the mysterious entity who had finally received a name.

"How could I have forgotten it all?" Garcia wiped her eyes. "Well...I didn't really forget it, not a single minute of it. I just wanted to forget it. I refused to connect it with you, all these years that we've been working together. I refused until it was just you and me in a roomful of cyanide, no BAU, no family, no one to help us," she whispered through her tears.

"So did I," said Reid. "I didn't want to make the connection either, for different reasons. It helped that I looked really different back then. I was only thirteen that year. You looked different too," he tugged at her formerly blue- and pink-streaked hair.

"I tried to block out that whole year," Garcia explained. "After the FBI caught me hacking into their systems, I had to leave Tech. I put the past behind me, assumed a new persona. I wanted to start over. I wanted to be Technical Analyst Penelope Garcia - normal, healthy, and well-adjusted!" she laughed at the ridiculous notion.

"Did it work?" asked Reid.

"Of course not!" Garcia answered. "I'm still the same as always...as screwed up and broken as ever. It wasn't just my mom and my stepdad and the accident. My dad, my real one, died of cancer when I was four. That was the first thing that screwed me up."

"My mom married again, a couple of years later, and everything was perfect for awhile, until the accident," she continued. "I took comfort in my new family and forgot the one I had lost. I pretended that Rick was my own father. I even took his name. My brothers, Josh and Jonathan, never did."

Garcia stopped. Here she was, divulging such information to the best of friends, and it felt right.

Reid smiled softly. He was ready to listen to her troubles, any and all of them, but he was not ready to divulge his own. He was not broken enough, but sooner or later, he would be.

"You're not the only one who tried to block out The Pit," he revealed, "So did I."

"I went down there to check on you one day in July. You were gone, and you hadn't left anything behind. There was not a single scrap of evidence that anyone had lived in The Pit for nine months. I thought I was going crazy. I thought I had hallucinated everything. Even while you were there, I never told anyone about you, just in case you weren't real."

"For me, the line between reality and illusion has always been blurry..." he admitted.

"I know," Garcia said quietly. "The FBI didn't let me leave anything behind, not even a note for you. They collected all my belongings as evidence to use against me, in case I rejected their job offer. As if I had any other prospects! As if I would have chosen to go to prison instead!"

"They offered you a job right away?" asked Reid, leaning forward to hear the tale.

"Yeah, they were desperate to keep me under their control. They didn't want me hacking into their systems, and they didn't want anyone finding out about me hacking into their systems. One night, when you were off on one of your geology field trips, I hijacked the entire FBI computer system. I unleashed a computer virus that took them weeks to eliminate. There was no point to it, but I wanted to see if I could do it. It was like running an experiment. Like the UnSub was running his experiment..." she trailed off.

"You're not the UnSub," said Reid. "You didn't shut yourself off completely. That takes courage, you know. The easy way out would have been to crawl into a hole and never see anyone again."

"But I'm curious," he changed the subject. "What did you find out about the government? Did you find out anything about Area 51?"

"Oh, you wouldn't believe half the things I found out!" Garcia whispered. "It would take weeks to tell you all of it."

"I'm listening, I'm listening," Reid encouraged her.

"Another day, Junior G-Man!" Garcia smiled wickedly. "I don't want to disillusion you about your beloved Big Brother just yet. Right now, my butt is getting numb from sitting on this ledge. How about we snuggle up in your comfy bed down there?" she pointed at the room below. "I promise I won't fall on top of you again."

"I don't believe that for a second!" Reid snorted. "However, if you steal a cup of coffee for me from the nurses' station, I'll overlook it the next time it happens."

Reid lowered himself through the hole in the ceiling and stood on the bed to help Garcia on her descent. Even with his bad knee, the jump out of Hyperspace had been easy. He was so tall now.

The Princess and the Knight plopped down onto the creaking hospital bed and burrowed deep into the blankets, just in time for the LAPD to barge through the door with their guns drawn.

* * *

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" came the sound of a booming voice.

Derek Morgan barged into the room behind the police officers, Detective Kim following right behind him.

"Put your guns down!" he yelled, furious that the lowly street cops were pointing their weapons at his Baby Girl and Pretty Boy on the hospital bed. They looked so pale and helpless in his eyes, the eyes of a natural protector. He was so furious that he didn't even stop to consider why they were in bed together.

"Do as he says!" yelled Detective Kim. "They are no longer suspects in custody! They are Federal agents!"

The police officers slowly lowered their guns and looked from Morgan to Kim to the bed before holstering them. Detective Kim took them by the shoulders and guided them out of the room to explain the situation.

"Well, well, well," said Morgan, as he approached the bed, "Look what the cat dragged in."

Reid and Garcia snuggled closer together, waiting for his reprimands. Reid whisked out the sad puppy dog eyes that he used to manipulate people, and Garcia batted her eyelashes in wide-eyed innocence.

"You two just couldn't wait to go through official channels, could you?" Morgan tugged at a pair of empty handcuffs attached to the bedrail.

"We're Techers!" they replied in unison.

They glanced at each other as Morgan raised his eyebrows. Their unspoken understanding remained intact. Their friendship, the friendship that did not need to be articulated, was still their very own secret.

* * *

Derek Morgan looked across at Reid and Garcia sleeping on the BAU jet. They leaned their heads against each other. Herbert rested on the table between the facing seats.

"NyQuil," Reid mumbled in his sleep, "Want NyQuil..."

"No Nyquil...pumpkin ale..." Garcia mumbled in response.

"Princess," murmured Reid, nuzzling his nose against Garcia's bangs.

"Sir Rubik," murmured Garcia, "Want story..."

Morgan chuckled in the darkness. They looked and sounded like children, their heads leaning against each other, their lips murmuring incoherent nothings about princesses and knights and bedtime stories.

He moved into the couch across the aisle. He didn't want to fall asleep across from Reid, in case Reid had a nightmare, snatched up his cane, and mistook him for the UnSub. He didn't want to fall asleep across from Garcia, in case Garcia had a nightmare, snatched up Reid's revolver, and mistook him for the UnSub. They looked and sounded like children, but they were not children.

Morgan stretched out on the couch and settled into a leisurely nap with his headphones over his ears.

In his dream, Morgan dreamt that Reid and Garcia rode upon a large white cloud in the heavens. One moment, the heavens gleamed in the sunlight, and the next moment, they parted to reveal the starry night sky behind a veil of blue. He waved at the figures on the cloud, and the figures waved back at him. The cloud dipped in his direction, turned, and swooped down to pick him up. He waited patiently. They were safe, and he was content.

In her dream, Garcia dreamt that she was a princess. She was Princess Grendelin, and she rode upon a large white cloud with Sir Rubik at her side, flying into a flurry of pepperoni slices that he plucked out of the air and inserted into his long brown hair. Images and reels peeked out of little cubbyholes that stood ajar in their aisles. They swirled gleefully in their new-found freedom and came to her as if for the very first time. Each image was different but much the same - the Princess and the Knight, young again, hurtling down the 110 Freeway, lurching up the hill near JPL, twisting and turning through the curves of the Angeles Crest Highway. The past was the past, and she was content.

In his dream, Reid dreamt that he was a knight. He was Sir Rubik - Champion of the Princess, Protector of the Realm. He rode upon a large white cloud with the Princess at his side, but he was uneasy. He searched the red-tiled roofs below, squinting to spot something he had left behind. The past was the past, and he was not content.

Up to this point, his life had been full of mistakes, and he had yet to forgive himself for a single one of them.

* * *

Nerd speak clarifications

1) Hyperspace

In addition to being the space between the ceiling and the roof or the space between the floors, it also refers to dimensions beyond the three dimensions of the physical world. Used in math and physics, especially string theory. Used in science fiction for faster-than-light travel in the universe.

2) David Bowie

Constant references not caused by author's insanity. Instead caused by episode "Penelope" (Season 3, Episode 9) when Garcia is at the hospital after getting shot, and she's telling Reid and Morgan that she kept hearing David Bowie and wondering if David Bowie was God. Then, they played the Heroes song at the end of the episode.

Author's Note: So concludes the first arc of this story. The second part, chapters 13-24, will cover Feb-July 1995 and the equally disturbing events of July 2010. It will explore many of the same themes from a different angle, and focus more on Reid's "mental problems" than Garcia's "mental problems" that were the focus of this arc. The case will be the complete opposite of this case, but the UnSub has already been mentioned.

Thanks again for reading!


	13. Chapter 13

Disclaimer 1: I do not own Criminal Minds.

Disclaimer 2: I do not own Caltech, although I did go to college there. All characters are fictional, regardless of how much they may resemble actual persons.

Author's Note: The format of this story is unusual. It alternates between 1994-1995 and 2010. I hope the weird format doesn't bother people too much, since I've already got a bunch of chapters written and plan to update regularly. I just need to proofread the chapters before I add them to the story.

Some of the chapters contain quite a bit of nerd speak, but I reserve the right to nerd speak as much as I want in a story about my favorite TV nerds. Nerd speak clarifications may be found at the end of each chapter.

This is my first ever fanfiction. Reading &/ Reviewing are much appreciated. Enjoy!

* * *

Chapter 13

February 1995

"Hey, Princess, can you remind me why we're camping at 7,000 feet in February right after a major winter storm and right before another major winter storm?" Sir Rubik inquired, rubbing his numb cheeks with his numb fingers.

"Because it's fun!" replied the Princess. "I used to go snow-camping all the time when I was little."

She poked the roaring campfire with a tree branch, launching glowing orange embers into the freezing night air.

The Crystal Lake Campground was completely deserted. Princess Grendelin and Sir Rubik were the only campers at this time of year. It was 24 degrees Fahrenheit.

"Snow-camping?" asked Sir Rubik. "You mean there's a name for this activity? It's not unique to you? Other people do it too? Voluntarily? Not as cruel and unusual?"

"It's called communing with nature, dear Rube," explained the Princess. "It's supposed to clear your head, give you a new appreciation for the simple pleasures in life."

"Oh yeah!" said Rube sarcastically. "I do appreciate life a lot more than I did twelve hours ago. I just don't know if I'll still be around to appreciate life twelve hours from now!"

"Don't worry about it, Rube," comforted the Princess. "I only know of one person who dropped dead while snow-camping...well...at this campground...at least..."

"He was collecting firewood around the lake when he slipped on the ice, hit his head, and fell into the freezing water. He drowned, and his body has never been recovered from the bottom of the lake. Legend has it that he still wanders the Angeles National Forest, day and night, collecting firewood from campsites and leaving behind balanced rock sculptures as payment."

Sir Rubik froze, his foggy exhalations hanging in mid-air. He shivered on his log. His teeth chattered uncontrollably. He couldn't feel his fingers and toes.

Worst of all, he was beginning to doubt the Princess for the first time since he had met her. She seemed to be torturing him deliberately. It was like she was morphing into her eviler twin.

Doubt vanished in a puff of breath as Princess Grendelin handed Sir Rubik a perfectly roasted s'more. He took a bite, passed it back to her, she took a bite, passed it back to him, and he devoured the remains himself while she pouted and threatened to strangle him with his purple scarf. He pulled his retractable knife out of his boot and brandished it triumphantly at the Princess. She armed herself with snowballs from the waist-high piles of unplowed snow all around the campsite. They attacked each other with gusto, her launching snowballs at him while he stabbed them out of the air with his knife. The battle went on and on, neither side conceding an inch, until a commotion was heard from the direction of the lake.

The adversaries stopped in their tracks. They stared at the creature that emerged from the trees.

It was a mule deer, a huge buck, at least 300 pounds, with beautiful velvety antlers that it had yet to shed after mating season. It halted on its hooves, glanced sideways at the Princess and the Knight, and continued calmly on its way, with nary an idle thought to expend on the interlopers in its domain. The Princess and the Knight glanced at each other, sharing a single thought that dominated both of their brains.

"Thank God that wasn't a bear!" screeched the Princess.

"Ditto!" screeched the Knight.

"Why don't we go hide in the bathroom for awhile?" suggested the Princess. "At least until all migratory nocturnal creatures have finished passing through the campground?"

"Your wish is my command!" replied the Knight.

The adversaries-turned-allies gathered up a pile of blankets from their tent and wrapped the wooly folds around themselves as they lumbered, mammoth-like, into the women's bathroom. The Princess built a small fire in the sink. The Knight built a balanced rock sculpture on the counter. Their whispers warmed up the tiny habitat.

If the Crystal Lake Wanderer really existed, he would have observed the Princess and the Knight from his position behind the pine trees surrounding the campground. He would have felt a tinge of jealousy. He stood on the outside, looking in. He waited, day and night, for his body to be raised out of the bone-chilling waters, while they - the girl and the boy, the campers, the rangers - went on with their lives, whispering ghost stories about him in the warmth of their companionship.

* * *

Princess Grendelin popped open a bottle of everclear and sniffed the contents. She grimaced at the vapors of nearly pure ethanol. This was not pumpkin ale.

She offered the bottle to Sir Rubik, waiting for his cue on how to proceed with their next mountain adventure.

"I've never breathed fire before," she said. "I don't know if we should do it here. What if the rangers show up? I'm not old enough to carry alcohol."

"It's easy," said Sir Rubik, ignoring the part about the rangers and focusing on the fire-breathing part instead.

"All you have to do is take a swig of everclear, hold it in your mouth for a second, and spit it out onto the torch," he indicated a column of rolled-up newspaper. "I've done it lots of times. Some of the other Scurves do it every night in the courtyard. One guy can breathe fire and ride his unicycle at the same time. Of course, he did burn himself in the face last year, but the scars have almost faded by now. It's inevitable, I guess, eventually happens to everyone who breathes fire as a hobby..."

Princess Grendelin gulped. She had a feeling that Sir Rubik was torturing her deliberately. It was like he was morphing into his eviler twin.

The "torch" rustled in her shaking hands as she held it in front of her face. Fire-breathing had always seemed like so much fun when someone else was doing it. Princess Grendelin had always wanted to try it, but now that the big moment had arrived, she wasn't sure if she had reached the necessary levels of mental unhingement.

She glanced at Sir Rubik. He smiled at her reassuringly while flicking his lighter on and off.

"Are you sure about this?" he asked. "You don't have to do this if you don't want to."

"No, no, no," she replied, "I want to try it! I've always wanted to try it, ever since I saw the Scurves do it at Freshman Orientation. That was two years ago, before Search-and-Rescue had to save the freshman who tried to scale a 500-foot cliff with his bare hands. After that happened, the YMCA banned all hazardous activities, including fire-breathing, from Camp Fox."

She stopped abruptly. She had revealed too much.

Sir Rubik didn't know that she had been a student. He didn't know that she would have been a sophomore this year if she had not taken a leave of absence from school. He didn't know anything about her, and she wanted to keep it that way. As long as she kept things the way they were, she could retain her dignity in front of him.

She didn't want him to know the truth about her. The truth was she was weak. In fact, she was the weakest of the weak.

Other people her age could get terminal cancer and still go on with their lives - stay in school, spend time with their families, leave behind precious moments for their friends to remember them by. She was perfectly healthy. She had been attending one of the best schools in the world. She had four brothers who all looked upon themselves as her protectors, just because she was the only girl in the family. Yet, she could not muster the strength to go on with anything in her life. Instead of becoming Penelope the Comet Chaser, she had become Princess Grendelin the Escape Artist, all because she was weak and stupid and worthless.

Penelope inhaled a swirl of everclear fumes to drive away the soreness she felt at the tip of her nose. In the blink of an eye, she was once again Princess Grendelin, happy to reside at the bottom of The Pit, ready to take on the hazardous fire-breathing rituals of the barely civilized Scurves. The boy pretended not to notice as the girl swallowed away her real self.

"OK," he said, "Are you ready?"

"Ready!" answered the Princess, "Ready for anything!"

"Remember what I told you not to do?" asked Sir Rubik.

"Don't swallow the everclear," replied the Princess, "Whatever I do, I shouldn't swallow the everclear!"

"Exactly," said Sir Rubik, "And what should you do after you've finished not swallowing the everclear?"

"Continue to not swallow the everclear!" she affirmed.

"I've trained my helper monkey well!" Sir Rubik teased.

His helper monkey threatened to shove the bottle of everclear down his throat, sending him ducking away, out of reach of its sharp-nailed grasping paws.

"Alright," he continued, "And how do you spit the everclear onto the torch?"

"Spit it out straight ahead, spit it out all at once, and back away from the fireball afterwards."

"Correct!" Sir Rubik enunciated. "I'm such a good teacher. I bet I could run a school for helper monkeys. I bet I could turn all the helper monkeys in the world into super-intelligent helper monkeys. They could become my minions. I could feed them hippie porridge for breakfast, hippie sandwiches for lunch, and hippie steak for dinner. Then, I could collect their poop and use it to power my personal space station, my very own eye in the sky!"

He tilted his head back and laughed maniacally as the Princess watched her Knight descend into an episode of utter madness.

As a hippie herself, she entertained certain qualms about ingesting hippie soup, hippie sandwiches, and hippie steak. However, in her role as helper monkey, she was eager to feed upon whatever samples of human flesh she could sink her fangs into.

The helper and the helped both looked up as the first snowflakes hit the tips of their noses. Sir Rubik stared at his snowflake, cross-eyed, as it melted away amongst his freckles.

"I'm melting, I'm melting!" intoned the Princess in her best Wicked Witch voice.

Sir Rubik turned upon his helper monkey.

"Do it!" he ordered.

The Princess took a swig of everclear, grimaced as the vile liquid burned her mouth, and spit it out, straight ahead and all at once, onto the burning torch in her hands. A fireball erupted from the column of rolled-up newspaper, its flames flaring outwards through the path of rapidly falling snowflakes. It was the most perfect fireball Sir Rubik had ever seen. He was indeed the best teacher in the world, and Princess Grendelin was indeed his best student.

If Sir Rubik really owned a personal space station, if he really operated his very own eye in the sky, he would no doubt have built a sentient robot to keep him company, his very own positronic man, like "R. Daneel Olivaw" from Isaac Asimov's "Robot" and "Foundation" series. It would have looked out the viewport and seen its master and his accomplice blowing fireballs through a gathering storm. It would have imagined that it could smell the burning of paper and hear the whooshing of flames and taste the bitterness of alcohol and feel the chill of snowflakes. It would have checked its internal clock and counted down the microseconds until its master returned home.

For the first time in its existence, it would have felt lonely in the face of its master's joy. It would have felt a tinge of jealousy. It stood on the outside, looking in. It could wait, for seconds and minutes and hours and millenia, upon its mighty steed in the vacuum, while its master, he of the snow-frosted curls, and his accomplice, she of the snow-frosted braids, wend their wanton way through the frothing bubble of air below.

* * *

Spencer psychoanalyzed the Princess as he typed up his literature essay. His fingers flew over the keyboard, barely able to keep up with the words that spilled out of his brain.

"The Divine Comedy" was one of his favorite works. His mother had first read it to him when he was four, and he had read it to himself innumerable times since then. He focused one train of thought upon his literary analysis of Dante's poem, while he initiated a second train of thought upon his psychoanalysis of the girl in The Pit.

Who was she? He longed to know her real name. He longed to know her real story.

He had experienced a minor epiphany during their fire-breathing lesson. She was the waiter girl who had dumped a burning hot pizza on his head during Freshman Orientation.

He played a reel over and over before his eyes. In it, he watched the skinny figure of a teenage girl - her blonde ponytail swinging down her back, apron strings tied around her waist - retreating out the back door of the kitchen at Camp Fox. The reel was blurry, having been recorded several months ago through the film of a wet paper napkin over his face.

What had gone wrong in her life that had caused her to move into The Pit? Had something happened after Freshman Orientation? Had something happened before?

Based on his knowledge of the DSM, the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders", Spencer recognized the signs of depression, anxiety, and withdrawal in the Princess. Based on her slip of the tongue during their fire-breathing lesson, Spencer recognized the Princess as a fellow Techer, a sophomore, most likely a Darb from Dabney House, one of the carefree hippies who wandered around campus in their bare feet, tie-dyed wardrobe, and waist-length multi-colored hair.

An idea nucleated itself in his mind. It was supported by the teeniest-tiniest shreds of data, but it was a plausible idea nonetheless.

The Princess was afraid of driving. She was particularly afraid of driving on the freeway.

In his absence, she did not drive her broken-down old Beetle. Yet, she would drive it anywhere as long as he was around with ride with her. She drove it on the 110 Freeway, the traffic-choked corridor between LA and the San Gabriel Valley, where curves were banked the wrong way and center dividers were dented with the impacts of car fenders upon their metal skeletons. She drove it through the twists and turns of the Angeles Crest Highway. She drove it with flasks of homemade liquor and bottles of everclear in the back, even though she was not old enough to carry alcohol.

Another trait that distinguished the Princess was her obsession with homemade alcoholic beverages. During the Fall Term, she had produced pumpkin ale (delicious), apple cider (delicious), and raspberry cordial (delicious). During the Winter Term, so far, she had produced apricot nectar (disgusting), red grape wine (delicious), green grape wine (delicious), and acorn squash ambrosia (inconclusive due to explosion of squash before conclusion of fermentative period).

Driving and drinking, drinking and driving.

Drunk driving?

Victim or perpetrator?

"Victim!" Spencer thought.

He bit down harshly upon his lower lip.

"Perpetrator?" he thought, "That's impossible! Only you would think of such a thing!"

He berated himself for psychoanalyzing the Princess yet again. It was becoming one of his nastiest habits.

To make it up to her, he decided to psychoanalyze himself for awhile to see how much he liked the taste of his own medicine.

The truth about Spencer Reid was that he was a weakling masquerading as a Knight. He was an escape artist. Why else would he have left his mother behind while he traipsed off to college hundreds of miles away? How did he know that nothing bad was going to happen to her while he was gone? She might fall down the stairs or forget to turn off the stove or go out for a stroll during a thunderstorm. She might delude herself into thinking that she was Benjamin Franklin and decide to fly a kite on the roof during a thunderstorm. He didn't know, she didn't know, her psychiatrist didn't know, so the safest thing to do would have been for him to stay home and take care of her, as a good son would have done.

Suddenly, in a flash of insight, Spencer understood the root cause of his actions. Statistics stipulated that the abused often became abusers. In his case, it was the abandoned who had become an abandoner.

Anger and guilt mixed with his medicine, increasing its bitterness and strength. The bitterness was not entirely unpleasant, and Spencer wondered if he would ever grow to like it.

"No way," he thought. "About as likely as me liking coffee...Yuck!"

In the same moment, Spencer disavowed both psychoanalysis and coffee.

"I'm never psychoanalyzing anyone ever again!" he thought. "Psychoanalyzing others leads to psychoanalyzing oneself, and psychoanalyzing oneself is a patented method of driving oneself crazy!"

He proceeded to finish his literature essay without psychoanalyzing anyone for four pages. He pressed a button to print it out and grabbed the twelve sheets of paper on his way out of the computer lab.

For the moment, the girl in The Pit depended on him, at least in part, for her happiness. He would provide it without asking pesky questions. He would be there for her without psychoanalyzing her every move, no matter how many spitballs of data bombarded his thick glasses.

He would be the perfect friend. He would give up his silly little crush on her. He would not let anything ruin their undying friendship.

Then, perhaps, she would never leave him behind.

* * *

Penelope struggled to replay the fire-breathing lesson from Sir Rubik's perspective as she eavesdropped on him from the roof of Fleming House. This was one of those times that she wished she had an eidetic memory.

"Actually," she thought, "An eidetic memory wouldn't be enough. I'd need to have an out-of-body experience as well."

"Did he hear me mention Freshman Orientation two years ago?" she wondered. "Did he realize I was giving myself away? What about my teary-eyed freakout afterwards? Did he notice that too?"

"Maybe he's already looked me up in the yearbook," she thought. "You can hide for now, but you can't hide forever."

It bothered her immensely to have Sir Rubik discover her real self. At first, she had thought that she didn't want him to find out what a weak-willed pathetic creature she was beneath her peachy perfect exterior. Then, she had thought that he would judge her for her weakness, that he would like her a little less with each passing minute that he had to dwell upon her sob story. Now, she realized that the reason was much simpler.

She couldn't risk Sir Rubik discovering her real self, because she couldn't risk losing the perfect friend.

For Penelope, at this stage of her life, the perfect friend was the perfect stranger.

He was the one who played with her without knowing anything about her. He was the one who did not ask pesky questions or psychoanalyze her every move. He would not consult the DSM to diagnose her mental disorders. He would be there for her without her being there for him. She was not strong enough or capable enough to be there for anyone. She could not even be there for herself.

Penelope sniffled and blinked. Through watery eyes, she watched her noblest Knight prance about on the Olive Walk below.

He had insisted on bringing back a tub of snow from the mountains after their sledding adventure. He was now pelting his friends with snowballs on the Olive Walk, his maniacal laughs filling the first warm night of the coming spring. Penelope was pleased to discover that small as he looked, he could certainly hold his own in a snowball fight. He didn't even need his retractable knife to defend himself.

His youthful exuberance soothed her personal anxieties. She replaced them with anxieties about him. She wondered why he was willing to join her in her self-built fantasy world in The Pit. She knew that the answer could be found within the masses of information that she did not know about him. She wished that she could join him as Penelope, the resident IT expert of Dabney House, rather than as Princess Grendelin, the resident computer hacker of The Pit.

One day, she would. One day, she would be well and whole and herself again.

Then, perhaps, she would be there for him.

* * *

Nerd speak clarifications

1) Angeles National Forest

The mountains in the story are the San Gabriel Mountains just above Pasadena, north of LA. It has peaks from 5000-10000 feet, is very wild with lots of animals, and snows a lot during the winter.

2) R. Daneel Olivaw/Asimov

Reid has mentioned Asimov several times on the show. Isaac Asimov is a master of science fiction, who wrote the famous "Robot" and "Foundation" series. The movie "I, Robot" starring Will Smith was based on his robot books. In his books, robots, aka positronic men, are indistinguishable from humans and can do anything humans can do except be evil and reproduce. Robot Daneel Olivaw is the most important robot character. He follows the Three Laws of Robotics, protecting individual humans from each other and themselves, as well as protecting and improving humanity over millions of years.


	14. Chapter 14

Disclaimer 1: I do not own Criminal Minds.

Disclaimer 2: I do not own Caltech, although I did go to college there. All characters are fictional, regardless of how much they may resemble actual persons.

Author's Note: The format of this story is unusual. It alternates between 1994-1995 and 2010. I hope the weird format doesn't bother people too much, since I've already got a bunch of chapters written and plan to update regularly. I just need to proofread the chapters before I add them to the story.

Some of the chapters contain quite a bit of nerd speak, but I reserve the right to nerd speak as much as I want in a story about my favorite TV nerds. Nerd speak clarifications may be found at the end of each chapter.

This is my first ever fanfiction. Reading &/ Reviewing are much appreciated. Enjoy!

* * *

Chapter 14

July 2010

Thunderous applause rang out across Gates Lecture Hall. It carried through the open doors of the lecture hall, through the open doors of the building, into the sun-lit world above. It reflected off the watery surface of Millikan Pond and ricocheted off the metal fins of the Spinning Blades of Death. The hideous sculpture spun the decibels into the mid-summer heat. The decibels savored the rose-flavored air before tracing their way back to their birthplace, where Reid and Garcia stood at the projector screen, red-faced and embarassed, as the students and professors of Caltech blared out their approval.

Garcia held up her honorary Ph.D. Having decided that Reid owned an adequate number of Ph.D.s, the Trustees of the Institute had awarded him a 50-pound bag of the finest sugar and a 50-pound bag of the finest coffee. Herbert the Cane received a mail-order bride named Gertrude, and they were married in their wide orange ribbons, orange being the official color of the Institute.

Drs. Reid and Garcia were here at Caltech to give a lecture on their recent work at the BAU. This time, they had delivered it without incident.

* * *

"Dr. Reid? Dr. Garcia?" a voice called them hesitantly as they strolled down the Olive Walk towards the Athenaeum.

Reid turned to see a short teenage girl with medium brown hair and round Harry Potter glasses. She wore a black T-shirt with Maxwell's Equations on the front and knee-length denim shorts with tools hanging out of a utility pouch attached to her belt.

"I, um, I, uh, I'm a student here," said the girl, uncertain of how to proceed.

Based on her appearance, Reid guessed that she was a Mole, a resident of Blacker House. The residents of Blacker House were called Moles, because they preferred to travel around campus through the steam tunnels, some of them rarely ever emerging to greet the light of day. Most were engineering majors who desired nothing more from the world than to be left alone with their precious machines in their precious workshops.

"Yes? What can we do for you?" asked Garcia in her friendliest brightest tone.

Techers were generally shy, and Moles even more so. It had been a feat of courage for the girl to approach the two of them, now that they had entered the legendary folklore of Caltech.

"I have a problem, and I was hoping you could help me," replied the girl. "It's about my boyfriend, Jared. I've been looking for him all day, and I can't find him, and no one else has seen him today, and his room is all messed up, and his window is cracked, and his chair is broken, and I don't know what's happened to him!"

The words flooded out of her mouth. She frowned and fidgeted, twisting her fingers around a spool of string in her pouch.

"I don't know if I should've called Campus Security or the police by now, but I didn't do that, because he, my boyfriend, he's got..." she hesitated to reveal her boyfriend's secret.

"It's OK, you were right to approach us," said Reid. "Why don't we go sit over there?" he pointed towards a bench half-hidden behind a cluster of palm trees. "You can tell us everything from the beginning."

He felt his heart beat a little faster in his chest. He sweated in the 95-degree heat. Cracked windows and broken chairs did not necessarily imply foul play, especially not in Blacker House, where the Moles constantly "improved" their surroundings with novel contraptions of varying stability. However, the girl's demeanor, her behaviors and expressions, worried him immensely. Techers were not prone to breaking down whenever their friends, even their significant others, disappeared for a few hours, but this girl was distraught. She was perching at the edge of panic.

Garcia wrapped an arm over the girl's shoulder and guided her to the bench. Reid was glad that Garcia was here. He felt safest around her, whenever they hung out in her hacker cave at Quantico, but it hadn't been until January that he had realized the reason for it. Since then, they had spent so much time hanging out in her hacker cave that Morgan and Prentiss had started gossiping about them. Reid reminded himself to bore them out of their minds with a discussion of Linnean taxonomy as soon as he returned to Quantico.

"You know who we are, but we don't know you," Garcia said to the girl. "What's your name? And your boyfriend's full name?"

"My name is Melanie Hale, and my boyfriend's name is Jared Wilson," she answered.

"Good, Melanie and Jared," repeated Garcia. "Now, tell us what happened today, starting from the time you woke up this morning."

Reid nodded at Melanie. He was content to let Garcia take the lead. She wasn't used to it, but that didn't mean that she wasn't good at it. She exuded a natural warmth that soothed everyone around her. She understood how to deal with victims. It was a skill she had acquired from the Victim Assistance Center, where she counseled the families of murder victims every weekend.

"I woke up this morning around 10:30, but I didn't knock on Jared's door until 12:30, because I knew he had been up all night working on his research report. We turn in research reports every month for the summer research program, and Jared had waited until the last minute to do his."

"As did we all," Reid and Garcia replied in unison. Their understanding eyes encouraged her to go on.

"Jared didn't answer when I knocked, and his door was locked, which is weird, because he never locks his door. So I went to look for him in his lab, but none of the grad students had seen him this morning. I asked his professor if he had turned in his research report, and the professor said that he hadn't turned in his report or shown up for Group Meeting at 1:00 PM. Then, I went back to Blacker, but no one was around to help me look for him, because everyone had gone to lab for the day. So I power-punched his door and went in, and his room was all messed up. The window was cracked, and a chair was broken and toppled over, and the pages of his research report were scattered all over the floor."

She looked down into her lap, still hesitating to reveal the deep dark secret lurking in her boyfriend's dorm room.

"Alright, this is all very important information," Garcia reassured her. "You're doing great, Melanie. Now, tell us about your boyfriend. Is this normal behavior for him? What does his room look like most of the time?"

Reid nodded again, more at Garcia than at Melanie. As long as she was handling the situation perfectly, he might as well slack off and let her do the work.

"Yeah, Jared is kind of a slob, but his room looked really weird today. It didn't look like his usual mess. It's usually more cluttered than messy. He keeps tools and parts lying around on the floor, not papers, and I've never seen him break anything in his room, not like the cracked window and broken chair today. It might look like chaos down there," she gestured at the ground, "But it's all very organized up here," she gestured at her head.

"I don't know! Maybe I'm overreacting! Maybe he's hiding out in the steam tunnels for the day, but then, he would've turned in his research report and told one of the grad students in his lab. I don't know what it was, but something about his room gave me the creeps."

"Why don't we go over to Blacker and take a look?" asked Reid. "Let's not assume the worst until we examine the evidence."

"Um, I guess, uh, but there's one thing you need to know first," said Melanie. "Jared's a good guy. He's one of the smartest people on campus, and that's saying a lot. But he does like to experiment with...uh...with...recreational drugs. He's got a few stashes of things that he shouldn't have in his room. I didn't know whether to call Campus Security or the police, because I didn't want them finding the drugs. I thought that since you were both Techers that you'd understand?"

"We understand," Garcia replied. "I was a Darb, Melanie. Nothing about drugs surpises me. You were right to approach us, but if there does turn out to be foul play, we can't withhold this information from the police."

"She's right," Reid agreed, not caring to reveal that he, too, knew everything there was to know about drugs. "We don't know which pieces of information are going to be crucial for finding Jared, so we're depending on you to tell us everything you know about him. But you should also know, Melanie, that finding Jared is our top priority. Right now, the drugs don't matter a bit."

"OK," Melanie nodded, convinced that her boyfriend's hobby wasn't going to get him into trouble with the FBI. "We can go through the back," she pointed towards the tree-lined weed garden between Blacker House and California Boulevard.

Reid walked a few steps behind Garcia and Melanie as they made their way to Blacker House. An idea had nucleated itself in his mind, but he didn't want to release it into the world until he had examined the evidence.

* * *

"You really think it's the Campus Creeper, back after all these years? Back after eighteen years?" came the sound of Detective Kim's voice through Reid's cell phone.

"The Campus Creeper, or a very accurate copycat," answered Reid. "I'm at the crime scene right now. Everything fits with the Campus Creeper. The details of the abduction sites have never been released to the public, so I'm betting on the actual Campus Creeper rather than a copycat."

"I'll be there in 15 minutes," said Detective Kim. "I'm sending the CSI team, but it's rush hour, so it might take awhile for them to get there."

"Alright, see you in a bit," said Reid.

He hung up and turned to take in the crime scene once again. He couldn't believe he was taking on the Campus Creeper. He couldn't believe the Campus Creeper was back.

"Shouldn't we call Hotch or JJ or someone?" asked Garcia. Her tone implied that Reid should have called Hotch or JJ before he had called Detective Kim.

"Yeah, you're right," he replied, "But the team left on a case this afternoon. Prentiss texted me during the lecture, while you were explaining the software. They're flying to Juneau to assist Alaskan and Canadian authorities on a cross-border spree killing case."

"Even if they were free, Hotch and the rest of the team wouldn't be able to help us right away. If this is really the Campus Creeper, we're already running out of time. It's at least 110 degrees in the desert everyday during the summer. Yesterday, it was 118 degrees. We need to start looking for Jared right away..."

He gazed out the window of Jared Wilson's dorm room, hesitating to assume responsibility for his ridiculous words. How were they going to find the young man before he succumbed to heatstroke in the desert? How were they going to rescue him if they had failed to rescue all the other victims, all eighteen of them?

Reid cringed in doubt. For a moment, he wished that the team were here with him. He wished that Hotch would walk through the open doorway, that he would be followed by Morgan and Prentiss, already discussing the victimology, that they would be followed by Rossi, the wheels already turning in his experienced mind, that JJ would be manning the phone banks at the police station and setting up a press conference to ask for help from the public.

Then, he realized that his wish was insincere. His real wish was to handle the case alone. For some reason, the case was becoming personal, and Reid's real wish was to indulge his hubris. He didn't call Hotch or JJ on the BAU jet, although he should have done it by now. He told himself that the traditional methods of profiling were not going to work this time, just as they had not worked 18 years ago. Victimology and psychological profiling may or may not get them closer to the UnSub, but they were not going to get them closer to the victim. The victim was in the desert, and the desert was what had to be profiled.

Hotch would agree that no one was as good at geographical profiling as Reid was. Morgan and Prentiss would agree that they didn't want to spend all their time coloring in maps. Rossi would agree that this was a job for the human computer. JJ would agree that this was a job that only 'Spence' could do. In the forest borealis, the BAU would hunt down the international spree killer, and in the desert australis, Reid would hunt down the Campus Creeper. Then, they would share battle stories over Cristal and Chaplin.

Besides, this was Caltech. This was his domain.

"And hers too," he reminded himself.

Reid nodded at Garcia, giving her a smile about as confident as he felt. She nodded back at him, pushing away her own wave of doubt.

Once again, it was up to the Princess and the Knight to deliver their mutual domain from evil. This time, the mid-day sun, under which all tangents could be entertained, would be their adversary.

* * *

Nerd speak clarifications

1) Caltech and drugs

I don't mean to imply that everyone at Caltech is a druggie, but students have been known to experiment with homemade recreational drugs, such as methamphetamines and LSD. Teams of students have been known to synthesize drugs in multi-step chemical reactions and compete against each other in these extremely illegal activities. Teams of grad students have been known to get mad when teams of undergrads beat them in yield and purity of the product.

2) Linnean taxonomy

Classification scheme for all living things, from Homo sapiens to E. Coli. Developed by Swedish scientist Carl Linneaus in the 1700s. The topic is actually fascinating, but Morgan wouldn't want to hear about it.

3) Forest borealis/Desert australis

Borealis, Latin for "northern". Australis, Latin for "southern", as in Australia the Southern Continent. The aurora, the "northern lights" seen at high latitudes, are also called the aurora borealis and aurora australis depending on whether they are in the Northern or Southern Hemisphere.


	15. Chapter 15

Disclaimer 1: I do not own Criminal Minds.

Disclaimer 2: I do not own Caltech, although I did go to college there. All characters are fictional, regardless of how much they may resemble actual persons.

Author's Note: The format of this story is unusual. It alternates between 1994-1995 and 2010. I hope the weird format doesn't bother people too much, since I've already got a bunch of chapters written and plan to update regularly. I just need to proofread the chapters before I add them to the story.

Some of the chapters contain quite a bit of nerd speak, but I reserve the right to nerd speak as much as I want in a story about my favorite TV nerds. Nerd speak clarifications may be found at the end of each chapter.

This is my first ever fanfiction. Reading &/ Reviewing are much appreciated. Enjoy!

* * *

Chapter 15

March 1995

"Push it!" screamed the Princess.

"I'm pushing it!" yelled the Knight, "It's not moving!"

"Harder!" cried the Princess.

"I'm trying!" exclaimed the Knight, "It's stuck!"

The horrible automobile lurched up the hill on Oak Grove Drive, just outside the entrance of JPL. It flatulated blue smoke from its tailpipe as it bore the abuse of its 13-year-old driver.

The driver clutched the steering wheel in his left hand, gripped the stick shift in his right hand, pressed the gas pedal with his right foot, and tapped his useless left foot in time with the exhortations of the Princess.

"Hey, Princess, can you remind me why we're illegally driving your decrepit automobile at JPL on a Sunday morning?" Sir Rubik inquired, his glasses fogging up with panicked breaths.

"Because you're learning to drive!" replied the Princess.

"I'm learning to drive?" asked Sir Rubik. "I'm not old enough to drive!"

"That's not what it says on your driver's license," retorted the Princess.

"Aren't you afraid of getting caught by the police?" asked Sir Rubik. "We'll be in so much trouble! Especially you, since you're not a minor. I could say that you kidnapped me and made me drive you all over LA. I've got powerful puppy dog eyes, and I know how to use them."

"No, you wouldn't!" replied the Princess. "Besides, I'm not afraid of the police!"

"Well, I am," said Sir Rubik, "I don't want to end up with a criminal record."

"It's not that bad," said the Princess. "A lot of the professors have criminal records, but they're still professors. I know all about them. I hacked into their personnel files over Winter Break. Besides, it's not like we're planning to join the FBI or anything!"

"No, we're not," Sir Rubik retorted, "But I'd like to keep my options open!"

"Why here? Why JPL?" he asked.

"Because I know the area," said the Princess. "It's always deserted on weekends, and it's not a residential area, unlike, oh I don't know, everywhere near Tech? Besides, the roads are good, not all pot-holey with earthquake cracks like..."

"Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap!" screamed Sir Rubik. "Move over! You take my seat, I'll take yours!"

"What the hell?" wondered the Princess.

She turned to look out the rear windshield of the Beetle. Her eyes widened as she spotted the black-and-white squad car of the California Highway Patrol.

Sir Rubik pulled over onto a turnout, his driving skills improving sharply under the veil of intense terror that fell over his consciousness. He and Princess Grendelin executed the fastest, most fluid seat-switch in recorded history.

"Ma'am?" came the sound of a voice next to the driver's side window.

Princess Grendelin gazed into the sparkling blue eyes of a handsome young officer. Her stomach fluttered. Her mouth watered. The officer was so pretty, but so manly as well, in his crisp khaki uniform.

"License and registration please?" said the officer.

She handed over her real license and registration. The officer glanced over them, satisfied with what he saw. The Princess smiled dreamily.

"Are you having car trouble, Miss?" asked the officer, altering his form of address to match the age on her driver's license.

"Oh no, Officer, thank you very much," replied the Princess. "This is an old car. The gas pedal got stuck for awhile there, but it's fine now. I'm getting it fixed next weekend," she lied.

"I understand, Miss," said the officer. "Make sure that you get it fixed then. You wouldn't want to endanger yourself or anyone else on the roads with a stuck gas pedal. Well, if there's nothing I can do for you today, I'll leave you to enjoy your weekend."

"Thank you, Officer, thank you so much," said the Princess in her sweetest sugariest voice.

It was excessively sugary, even for Sir Rubik the Sugar Addict. He covered his mouth with his hands in an effort to suppress laughter.

"Is your brother OK? Is he sick?" asked the officer, his eyes shifting to the boy in the passenger seat.

"Oh, he's fine, Officer," answered the Princess. "Little Rupert is fine. He's shy around strangers. He's an autistic savant. Would you like to see one of his tricks, Officer?"

She nudged "Little Rupert", who pulled out a 7x7x7 Rubik's Cube and solved it in one hand while reciting the digits of pi.

"..." he continued until the squad car drove out of sight.

"An autistic savant?" he turned upon the Princess. "You made me perform circus tricks for a cop that you're infatuated with?"

"What do you mean?" she asked innocently. "I was only sharing your natural-born talents with the rest of the world. And I'm not infatuated with anyone!"

"Yeah, right, I saw you staring at that cop," said Sir Rubik smugly. "And who the heck is 'Little Rupert'?" he suddenly remembered.

"Oh, that's easy," answered the Princess, eager to direct the conversation away from her infatuation with the delectable police officer. "I was going to call you Rube, but then I decided that Rube sounded too much like an assumed name, so I changed it to Rupert at the very last second."

"Because Rupert doesn't sound at all like an assumed name?"

"Not as much as Rube does! There are people named Rupert!"

"There are people named Rube too!" Rube insisted. "Rube Goldberg, for example. In his case, it was short for Reuben."

"Oh Lord!" muttered the Princess. "Not the Rube Goldberg fanboying again! I can't take it anymore! Let me see your little black notebook. What evil plots did you come up with this week?"

"Here, check it out," Sir Rubik pulled out his little black notebook. "Chem 1 was really boring this week, so I drew up a little something for Pre-Frosh Weekend."

"Duct tape?" exclaimed the Princess, as she traced his schematics with her little finger. "Oh this is evil, Rube, deliciously evil! But we can't unleash this indiscriminately. It's going to take hours to build, with all the supporting structures, and it's a one-shot deal."

She paused, ruminating over the victimology for the heinous crime they were about to commit.

"If only we could be certain that the Pre-Med Pre-Frosh would be running down the wind tunnel right after we put up this wall of duct tape..."

"We can!" Sir Rubik gestured excitedly. "My neighbor, Rebecca, is a biology major. She can take a group of Pre-Meds on a campus tour, and let me know when they're arriving at the wind tunnel. We walkie-talkie each other sometimes, so we can always find each other if we need to do our problem sets."

He pulled out a professional-looking transceiver and shook the antenna at Princess Grendelin.

"Perfect!" she replied.

She turned the key to start the car. It started on the third try. She asked Sir Rubik an extremely serious question as the Beetle chugged down the hill back to Tech.

"Sir Rubik," she asked, "Where are you pulling all these things out of?" she indicated the Rubik's Cube, the little black notebook, and the walkie-talkie.

"My ass!" he answered sarcastically.

The Princess and the Knight burst out laughing at the same time, their laughter drowning out the sound of the Beetle's embarassing flatulence.

* * *

Spencer woke up screaming in the shack that he shared with his classmates on their geology field trip.

"Spender, wake up! Are you OK?" asked a voice beside him.

Spencer rubbed his eyes. He slid halfway out of his sleeping bag before he realized that it was 20 degrees outside. He slithered back into the downy covers.

"What happened, Spender? Did you have a nightmare?" asked Rebecca.

"Yeah, I did," said Spencer. "I had a horrible nightmare about a skeleton chasing me all over the desert. Then, for some reason, we switched sides, and I started chasing the skeleton instead, but it got more and more transparent as the sun came up, and after awhile, I couldn't see it anymore. I was so sad that I couldn't see it anymore, so I...uh...I..."

"What, Spender, what?" asked Keith, curious about the nightmare.

"I murdered another skeleton to take its place!"

"You murdered a skeleton?" asked Eric, "How do you murder a skeleton?"

"I don't know! It didn't make any sense! But I did, and as long as I kept murdering skeletons, I could keep chasing them around the desert. But they always faded away as soon as the sun came up."

"That's one of the creepiest dreams I've ever heard," said Sarah.

"No kidding," said Rebecca. "Look where we are though! This place gives me the creeps even in the daytime. I'm afraid to go outside to use the bathroom."

"For awhile there, I entertained a delusion that the geology field trip would be a fun experience," said Keith. "I didn't realize that we'd be visiting some boring landslide instead of Death Valley. That's where they went last year. I didn't realize that it would be 90 degrees during the day and 20 degrees at night. I didn't realize that we'd have to sleep in a shack next to an abandoned mine, or that there would be coyotes howling all night, or that there would be rattlesnakes curled up in the sand next to the Port-a-Potties."

"It could be worse," said Eric. "There could be rattlesnakes curled up in the sand next to a complete absence of Port-a-Potties."

Everyone in the shack nodded their agreement.

Spencer rolled over in his bright green sleeping bag, preparing to go back to sleep. The sleeping bag resembled a giant green caterpillar with him in it. His mother had insisted on the garish color. Bright green was the color of Kryptonite, which meant that the sleeping bag would protect Spencer from the evil Kryptonians who roamed the Mojave Desert, looking for human children to abduct and vivisect. Jor-El was not to be messed with, having sent his son Kal-El to carry out his nefarious mission, whatever that was, on Earth.

* * *

Penelope squinted at the image on her computer screen, looking for signs of extraterrestrial occupation.

The image squinted back at her, its pixels inconclusive on her state-of-the-art monitor. She had purchased the monitor with a small portion of the money from her parents' monthly life insurance payouts. It was what she lived on, that and the return of her tuition money after she had dropped out of Caltech.

She traced her index finger over the satellite image of the Blackhawk Landslide. She wasn't interested in the slide itself. She was interested in whatever was underneath the slide.

During the '30s, miners working near the Blackhawk Landslide had reported seeing strange egg-shaped devices touch down on the desert floor. The devices opened on the rocks of the slide, revealing shiny metallic drill bits within. The bits drilled holes into the thickest part of the slide and disappeared into the depths, never to be seen again. The devices vaporized themselves, leaving behind no evidence of their existence.

Penelope wondered about the alien civilization under the slide. She wondered if she could join them. She could be their agent. She could spy on the Earthlings for them. She could hack into Earthling computer systems and sell the information to the aliens. They would pay a hefty price to uncover all of Earth's vulnerabilities ahead of their planned invasion.

Terrestrial governments would pay the same price to uncover all of each other's vulnerabilities. A lot of information lived in ill-secured databases all over the world. She could make a living extracting and selling information.

"Why shouldn't I?" she thought, "What connection do I have with the world?"

She despised the government more and more with each morsel of data that she dug up about them. She despised human beings more and more with each iota of evil that they shat upon the world.

On TV, there was nothing but violence and misery - murderers, rapists, kidnappers, bank robbers, drunk drivers. Penelope suspected that such things polluted the airwaves, because people secretly enjoyed them. They enjoyed fantasizing about serial killers, the more brutal the better. Some of them admired serial killers, because they wanted to commit the same crimes themselves, but lacked the necessary courage. Women offered themselves to convicted murderers in prison. Of course, these were the extreme cases, but even the "normal" fans couldn't tear their eyes away from a good old torture scene whenever it appeared on the TV screen.

Penelope didn't get it. She didn't get any of it anymore.

Sometimes, she wondered if she had lived for too long in The Pit, if she had spent too much time standing on the outside, looking in. Then, she realized that she didn't want to be on the inside. If the inside held nothing but violence and misery, then she'd rather stay here. She'd rather be an alien.

As for Sir Rubik, she'd abduct him into her mothership. They could be aliens together.

* * *

Nerd speak clairifications

1) Kryptonians/Jor-El/Kal-El

Superman!


	16. Chapter 16

Disclaimer 1: I do not own Criminal Minds.

Disclaimer 2: I do not own Caltech, although I did go to college there. All characters are fictional, regardless of how much they may resemble actual persons.

Author's Note: The format of this story is unusual. It alternates between 1994-1995 and 2010. I hope the weird format doesn't bother people too much, since I've already got a bunch of chapters written and plan to update regularly. I just need to proofread the chapters before I add them to the story.

Some of the chapters contain quite a bit of nerd speak, but I reserve the right to nerd speak as much as I want in a story about my favorite TV nerds. Nerd speak clarifications may be found at the end of each chapter.

This is my first ever fanfiction. Reading &/ Reviewing are much appreciated. Enjoy!

* * *

Chapter 16

July 2010

"Jared Wilson, 19, freshman aeronautical engineering major," said Reid, standing before a group of detectives at the Pasadena Police Department.

Caltech, being located in Pasadena, was under the jurisdiction of the Pasadena Police Department. Reid sensed that the Pasadena detectives were none too pleased by the invasion of the Los Angeles Police Department, an invasion caused by his own contact with Detective Kim. Now, everyone, from the police chiefs to the district attorney, wanted a piece of the Campus Creeper case. If Prentiss were here, she would be wrinkling her nose at the stench of politics in the air.

Reid wrinkled his nose, then stopped, realizing that there were people watching his every move. They were watching his every move, because as much as they wished to tear each other apart, the case was under federal jurisdiction. Two of the victims had been found dead in Joshua Tree National Park, more than 20 years ago.

"Disappeared from his dorm room sometime last night," Reid continued. "His girlfriend, Melanie Hale, 19, freshman electrical engineering major, reported him missing at 5:00 PM today. She didn't report the abduction at first, because her boyfriend had been keeping drugs in his room. Methamphetamines, LSD, marijuana, and psychedelic mushrooms. The marijuana and mushrooms are home-grown, and the methamphetamines and LSD are homemade, probably in a laboratory on campus."

"Before we go on," Garcia interjected, "I'd like to make it clear that the drugs are inconsequential to the case. Homemade drugs and alcohol are not uncommon amongst college students, especially not at Caltech. Jared Wilson was making drugs for his own recreational use. There is no evidence that he has ever bought or sold drugs of any kind."

Reid nodded in agreement. He looked down at the top of Garcia's head, at her red hair adorned with bejeweled dragonfly pins. She had stated exactly what he was planning to state, and once again, she had hit all the right notes.

"How do you know it's the Campus Creeper?" asked Detective Martinez, the senior detective at the Pasadena Police Department. "No one has heard a peep out of him for the past 18 years."

"First of all, the victimology is consistent with the Campus Creeper," Reid replied. "All of the previous victims were white male undergrads from small colleges in Southern California."

"Young white men? They're not exactly the target demographic for serial killers," said Detective Raymond, Detective Martinez's partner. "And why small colleges rather than UCLA or USC? He'd have his pick of victims there."

"We believe the Campus Creeper chose small colleges, because it was easier for him to abduct the students," said Reid, ignoring the victimology question for the moment. "A large campus, like UCLA or USC, is constantly patrolled by Campus Security. Small colleges, like Caltech, have a limited security force on a piece of land that is not much smaller than UCLA. With only 2,000 students spread out over a large area, the population density is fairly low for a university."

"Which means there would be fewer witnesses to observe the abductions, especially during the summer months," Garcia added.

"Right," said Detective Kim. "The Campus Creeper abducted all the victims in July or August, although some of the bodies weren't recovered from the desert until months had passed."

"Ease-of-entry is another hallmark of the Campus Creeper," Reid continued. "Jared Wilson's dorm room is located on the first floor of Blacker House. The window overlooks a student-run garden surrounded by tall trees and raised about six feet above street level. The street below is California Boulevard, which is very dark at night due to an absence of streetlights in the area."

"The smoking gun is the crime scene itself. It contains a detail that has never been released to the public. The Campus Creeper hid maps all over the victims' dorm rooms. Melanie, the girlfriend, didn't even notice them at first. We found maps pasted to the door of the closet on the inside, maps stuffed into a hole in the mattress, maps inserted into the pages of textbooks, maps wadded up into the victim's shoes and into the pockets of his clothing. The victim's computer desktop had been changed to a map of the Mojave Desert, and there was a disc of USGS topographic maps in the DVD drive."

"So this is his way of taunting us?" asked Detective Martinez.

"Or it's a compulsion," said his partner, "It's something that he has to do at every crime scene."

"Or he wants to be found," Detective Kim suggested.

Reid paused, listening to the detectives profile the UnSub. He was surprised that the Pasadena detectives were not more skeptical about profiling, unlike Detective Kim, who was used to working with the BAU. He supposed that the Great Cyanide Siege of 2010 had something to do with it. It was becoming a poster child for the efficacy of psychological profiling, as well as a poster child for the development of unorthodox crisis negotiation techniques.

"How did he find time to do this?" asked Detective Raymond. "He had just overpowered a 6'2", 200-lb male. Shouldn't he have driven off with the victim before someone came around to check out the commotion?"

"We don't know if there was much commotion," argued Detective Martinez. "Based on the layout of the crime scene, he could have drugged the kid and dragged him into a waiting vehicle. Based on the cracked window and broken chair, though, the kid did put up some kind of resistance, but when there's a gun pointed at you, what are you going to do? It's not that surprising that the abduction wouldn't attract much attention."

"I agree," said Garcia. "At Caltech, there is no concept of vigilance. No one ever locks their windows and doors, not even when they're sleeping. They leave their doors open when they aren't around. People don't lock their bikes when they leave them outside of buildings for the day. They leave their laptops sitting around on tables, indoors or outdoors, when they have to step away for more than a few seconds."

"Also, there is a rampant pranking culture on campus," said Reid. "Students are constantly pulling pranks on each other, so suspicious behavior and unusual commotion don't really stand out in the Student Houses. Campus Security lets the students have the run of the place."

"The students wouldn't have it any other way," Garcia added.

She didn't want to blame the abduction on Campus Security. They were good guys who let the students have their fun without interfering. It was part of the culture of Caltech, that the students didn't have to worry about anyone looking over their shoulders, monitoring their bizarre activities, demanding to check their IDs and backpacks at every turn. It lent an air of freedom to the place. Campus Security had known about her, when she had lived in The Pit, but they had never reported her to any of the higher authorities.

"So where do we start with this case?" asked Detective Raymond. "We..." he indicated non-specific personnel within the law enforcement profession. "We failed to solve it 18 years ago, and I don't see how things have improved since then. In fact, they've only gotten worse, with this reappearance of the Campus Creeper."

"We start fresh with the profile," Reid answered.

"We throw everything out and start over?" asked Detective Kim. "What about the consults from the BAU, the ones from 18 years ago?"

"We ignore them," said Reid. "They failed to help us then, and they're not going to help us now."

Garcia raised her eyebrows for a moment, remembered that there were people watching her every move, and lowered them before anyone noticed. She was surprised that Reid had dismissed the consults in such a cavalier manner. Then again, she wasn't a profiler, so what did she know about old moth-eaten consults? They had failed, and the Campus Creeper had abducted and murdered 18 young men between 1984 and 1992.

"When do you plan to present the profile, the new one?" asked Detective Martinez.

"Not until we find Jared Wilson," said Reid. "We'd usually start with the psychological profile of the UnSub, but in this case, we're a step behind, so we have to catch up. We need to do a different kind of profile to catch up."

"Which is..." asked Detective Kim, skeptical for the first time.

"A geographical profile," Reid replied, "A geographical profile of the Mojave Desert."

Three pairs of eyebrows hung in mid-air as Reid rubbed his palms against each other. It was freezing cold in the conference room, and he missed the warm confines of the Round Table Room at the BAU. Nevertheless, the mere mention of geographical profiling had its desired effect upon the detectives. They hastily exited the conference room, leaving the eccentric FBI dorks to color in their precious maps.

It was 8:00 PM. In ten hours, the sun would rise in the east, and the Mojave Desert, which was already vast and wild, would also become hot and dry and unfit for human habitation.

* * *

A cup of coffee appeared on the conference room table. After it was consumed, another cup took its place. Cups of coffee kept appearing and disappearing, almost as fast as lines of colored ink on the laminated map. Lines were drawn, then erased. Dry erase markers were tossed over shoulders when they stopped working. Tables were slapped when bolts of insight struck the slapper. Chairs were kicked when bolts of insight yielded to booms of bewilderment.

With neither the ability to clone himself or a year's supply of adderall, Reid was having trouble with the geographical profile.

The Campus Creeper had started abducting college students in 1984. He had abducted two in 1984, three in 1985, four in 1986, four in 1990, three in 1991, and two in 1992. All of his victims had been abducted from their dorm rooms in July or August. They had presumably died of heatstroke in the desert. Days, weeks, or months had passed between the abductions and the recoveries of the bodies. None had survived, and four of the bodies had never been recovered.

The fourteen bodies that had been recovered had been found between Interstate 40 to the north, Interstate 10 to the south, the San Bernardino Mountains to the west, and the Colorado River to the east. It was a vast region due east of the LA metropolitan area. It extended all the way to the California-Arizona border.

Within the region, there was no discernible pattern. The bodies were scattered all over the place. Some of them had been found on the desert floor, and others had been found near the peaks of mountains. Some of them had been found near roads or communities, and others had been found in the untrammeled wilderness. There was no telling if the victims had died in those locations, or if they had been transported there after death.

Like the desert itself, there was neither enough signal or enough noise.

The only thing Jared Wilson had going for him was the fellow Techer who had visited one of the locations on a geology field trip 15 years ago. The only other thing Jared Wilson had going for him was the other fellow Techer who used to entertain conspiracy theories about alien civilizations under the blistering sands.

* * *

"What do you mean?" asked Garcia, "What do you mean you're not getting anywhere with the geographical profile?"

"Geographical profiling isn't going to work in this case," answered Reid. "There's not enough of a pattern. Unlike dense urban environments filled with roads and buildings, sparse natural environments are not good foundations for geographical profiling. There are few roads, few habitations, and few landmarks. There aren't enough features to form a profile. But I have something that might work instead. Remember my geology field trip to the Blackhawk Landslide?"

"Yeah," said Garcia. "After you came back from that field trip, you told me that it was the single most non-educational experience of your life. You told me that you had failed to learn anything for the first time ever, because you were too busy dealing with the physical discomforts of the desert."

"Right," said Reid, "I didn't learn anything, but I did go back and look over my photos of the area. One of the photos is from the location where one of the bodies was recovered, the body of Nick Sullivan in 1992. I'm sure of it. The photo is taken from a different angle than all of the crime scene photos. You can see something in it that you can't see in the crime scene photos."

"What? What can you see?"

"It's a mine," said Reid.

He began doodling in his little black notebook. He drew out his photo and one of the crime scene photos, proving that they had been taken at the same location. The mountains in the background were of the same shape and located at the same distance. The desert floor in the middle distance carried the same type of vegetation. The cluster of barrel cactus in the foreground was the same, as was the slope of the small mountain, half-mountain and half-hill, behind the body.

The only difference was the height of the photographer. Reid's photo had been taken closer to the ground, which meant that it showed the gaping black hole of a mine shaft built into the slope. The crime scene photos showed the same entrance obscured by the parched brown plants overhanging it from the rocks above.

"A mine shaft? You think that a mine shaft has something to do with the case?" asked Garcia.

"I think so," Reid replied. "Back then, I was curious about the mine shaft, so I looked it up in the San Bernardino County Archives. It was an amateur gold mine operated by a father-son team during the '30s."

"I didn't know there were gold mines in the desert," said Garcia. "When it comes to gold in California, I thought all the miners went to the Sierra."

"Most miners did, but large-scale hydraulic gold mining was banned in the 1880s. The run-off from the mines was damaging the farmlands in the Central Valley, so the farmers took the mining companies to court and won. It was one of the first victories for environmental protection in the United States. Many of the miners moved into the Mojave Desert, which became host to all manner of mining activities - gold, silver, quartz, borax, uranium - you name it, it's out there. This particular mine was one of the shallowest hard-rock mines in the desert. Hard-rock gold mines have a wide range of depths, depending on where the veins of gold are located. The deepest gold mine is in South Africa, more than three kilometers below ground level."

"Hard-rock gold mines?" asked Garcia, now partial to more knowledge about gold mining than she had ever hoped to acquire.

"Hard-rock mining is different from panning. The miners have to dig a mine shaft and hoist the rocks out of the mine by hand. The rocks were ground up in a stamping mill to extract the gold. It was extremely hard work, but during the Great Depression, people were desperate for work."

"The Nick Sullivan mine wasn't the only gold mine near one of the victims," Reid continued. "The first victim, Michael Rory, was found near the El Dorado Mine Road in Joshua Tree National Park, near one of the deepest gold mines in the country."

"One of the deepest gold mines in 1984 and one of the shallowest gold mines in 1992," said Garcia. "What about the other locations?"

"That's what I need you to look into," said Reid. "Search USGS maps and databases for mines in the immediate areas of the bodies. Search the earliest cases first. If there's a trend, those cases will involve the deepest mines, which are more likely to be documented. Many of the shallow mines were illegal operations run by a few people, so they may not have been recorded. The Nick Sullivan mine was recorded, only because there was a dispute over the claim."

"Got it!" said Garcia, turning towards the computer screen. "What are you going to do?" she asked Reid.

"Work on the geological profile..." he replied, his eyes taking on the intense focus that foretold future feats of cognitive magnificence.

"Geological profile? I'm not a profiler, but I've never heard that term before," Garcia remarked.

"Yes, I think we need to take a geological approach to the problem," said Reid, not interested in the fact that geological profiling was not a recognized sub-field of profiling. "Bring up the photos of Nick Sullivan and Jared Wilson."

Garcia brought up the photos on her computer screen, wondering what victims' photos had to do with a "geological approach to the problem".

"Do you see it?" asked Reid.

"Same brown hair, same green eyes, same wide nose, same full lips...They could be brothers!" Garcia replied excitedly. "Nick Sullivan wasn't the last victim found, but he was the last victim abducted!"

"Exactly! I think the Campus Creeper is targeting victims based on their physical resemblance to previous victims. I think he's replaying the same crimes in reverse."

"Which means that Jared Wilson would be somewhere near the Blawkhawk Landslide!" Garcia exclaimed. "We need to check out that gold mine! He could be there right now!"

"Yes, we will," said Reid. "The Pasadena Police Department is liasing with the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department. They've already sent officers to the Nick Sullivan mine. The only problem is that mine shaft collapsed years ago. The entrance is gone. If the Campus Creeper is replaying the same crimes in reverse and if the mines are crucial for the crimes, then he's going to need to find another shallow gold mine in the slide area."

"There are many candidate mines surrounding the slide. It was a major mining area in the '30s. People laid claim and dug into the rocks at the slightest rumors of gold. The UnSub has a plethora of mines to choose from. He's going to pick the one that most resembles the Nick Sullivan mine."

"You mean visually?" asked Garcia.

"No, I mean geologically," said Reid. "The Nick Sullivan mine fits a specific geological profile. It was a quartz gold mine. The veins of gold were embedded in veins of quartz. The host rock was a mixture of diabase and granodiorite, igneous rocks formed by volcanic activity. The veins were located near the boundaries of igneous and sedimentary rocks, near a bed of limestone that forms the foundation for the slide."

"Gold deposits are found in fissures and fractures in rock formations, where hot pressurized water rose up from below. The water carried dissolved minerals, such as gold, and deposited the minerals into the cracks as it cooled. Many hydrothermal solutions are acidic, so when they came into contact with the alkaline limestone, they were neutralized, and the dissolved minerals crashed out of solution as ore deposits."

"So we're looking for shallow hard-rock gold mines embedded in diabase and granodiorite rock formations near their boundaries with limestone rock formations?" asked Garcia, now partial to more knowledge about rocks than she had ever hoped to acquire. She was so partial that she sounded exactly like Reid.

"Yes," Reid replied. "The Michael Rory mine fits the exact same profile, except that the vein of gold was embedded much deeper below ground level."

"So the Campus Creeper is familiar with geology?" asked Garcia. "Maybe he's a geologist?"

"Maybe, but he doesn't have to be," said Reid. "Look at how well he knows the desert. He must have explored the entire region at some point in his life. It's hard to avoid picking up geological knowledge if you're spending that much time in the desert. Geology, like astronomy, is a science that's relatively easy for the layman to pick up."

"Yeah, you're right," Garcia replied. "There are a lot of amateur geologists and amateur astronomers running around, but no one ever claims to be an amateur physicist or amateur chemist or amateur biologist."

"Exactly," Reid agreed. "Guess who the newest amateur geologists are?" he asked. "We don't have time to search all around the Blackhawk Landslide. It's one of the largest landslides in the world, and the area around it is chock-full of abandoned mines. It's going to be 120 degrees tomorrow. We need to pinpoint a few likely locations before we go out on a wild goose chase. The shallowest mines won't even be listed in any databases. They won't be listed in any archives. We have to guess where they might be located."

"How the heck are we going to do that?" Garcia stared at Reid.

"We have to guess based on everything we know about the geology of the area," Reid sighed. "It's the only chance Jared Wilson has."

* * *

Three GPS vans pulled up outside the Pasadena Police Department, just in time to see Drs. Reid and Garcia enter a black SUV in the parking lot. Two detectives followed them into the vehicle, and the SUV drove north, towards the 210 Freeway.

The occupants of the lead van glanced at each other and reached an unanimous decision. The driver turned the key in the ignition, the van started with a rumble, and the navigator turned up the air-conditioning. The lead van followed the SUV towards the freeway, and the other vans followed the lead van. Their orange logos reflected the early morning sunshine towards its source in the east.

* * *

Nerd speak clarifications

1) Geological Profiling

Does not exist as a profiling technique. Was invented by Reid in this story. Most of the facts about the mines, the desert, the slide are accurate on their own, but may have been embellished or brought together inaccurately for the story.

2) Blackhawk Landslide

Visible in Google Maps southeast of Lucerne Valley, CA. South of Highway 247, there's a north-south trending blocky feature covered with "pockmarks" on top. I went there for a geology field trip and we stayed at an abandoned mining camp overnight. The mine shaft was visible, and I think the structures still standing were stamping mills.

Note: Garcia has red hair now, like she got on the show halfway through season 5. However, I'm pretending that all the "I'm such a fragile flower, I can't do my job, the world is so scary and horrifying" storylines near the end of season 5 did not take place. I didn't enjoy that storyline for Garcia, so I will pretend that it never happened. :D


	17. Chapter 17

Disclaimer 1: I do not own Criminal Minds.

Disclaimer 2: I do not own Caltech, although I did go to college there. All characters are fictional, regardless of how much they may resemble actual persons.

Author's Note: The format of this story is unusual. It alternates between 1994-1995 and 2010. I hope the weird format doesn't bother people too much, since I've already got a bunch of chapters written and plan to update regularly. I just need to proofread the chapters before I add them to the story.

Some of the chapters contain quite a bit of nerd speak, but I reserve the right to nerd speak as much as I want in a story about my favorite TV nerds. Nerd speak clarifications may be found at the end of each chapter.

This is my first ever fanfiction. Reading &/ Reviewing are much appreciated. Enjoy!

* * *

Chapter 17

April 1995

Spencer poked his breasts gingerly. His fingers left indentations over their rubbery surface. He was pleased to discover that they were firm and perky. They smelled delicious. Sarah and Rebecca had not let him down. Balloons filled with chocolate pudding were indeed the best breasts this side of the real thing.

At first, Spencer had been a little miffed that his pudding breasts were so small. Then, Sarah had explained that he was supposed to be Sadie the Catholic Schoolgirl. Sadie was only thirteen, which meant that she had plenty of time to grow into her training bra.

Rebecca tightened the bra behind Sadie's back. The breasts perked up even more, but there was still the issue of cleavage. Sadie didn't appear to have any, but that couldn't be helped. It was a problem that plagued all the contestants in the Dabney House Drag Competition.

Sadie donned the starched white blouse that Sarah handed her from the pile of clothing on her armchair. They had wasted thirty minutes arguing over the specifics of Sadie's outfit. In the end, they had decided to go the classical route - sharp white blouse, red-and-black plaid skirt, and brown wool cardigan. Sadie was to be young and pure and innocent, characteristics that distinguished her from the other contestants, who were both more masculine and more perverted, not that there was a correlation between those pieces of data.

Sadie slipped a purity bracelet over the sleeve of her cardigan as Rebecca clipped a pair of earrings to her ears. After Princess Grendelin had convinced him that entering the Dabney House Drag Competition was within his best interests, Sir Rubik had drawn the line at getting his ears pierced. He still couldn't recall why the Drag Competition was critical to his continued well-being, but he did recall the vague forms of several threats directed towards a certain part of his anatomy. He sighed and told himself to let it go. After all, he was a 13-year-old kid, and as all 13-year-old kids knew, there was no point in entering a competition unless one was determined to win.

At an order from her handmaidens, Sadie twirled about - one foot on the floor, one foot in the air, her shiny black Mary Janes glistening in her wake. Her skirt flew up for a second, but quickly settled back into its original position, its hem a couple of inches above her knees. Sometimes, Sadie could be a real tease.

It was time for makeup.

First, Sarah applied a thin layer of foundation over Sadie's creamy white skin. Sadie didn't need much help in this area, because she was naturally blessed with a flawless complexion. Her eyes, however, were a different story.

Rebecca approached the pedestal with trepidation. Her tube of concealer shook in her unsteady fingers. She hoped that the tube would be enough to obscure Sadie's dark under-eye circles. In addition to her youth, purity, and innocence, dark under-eye circles were another of Sadie's distinguishing characteristics. It didn't help that Sadie stayed up until all hours of the night, engaging in secret trysts with her secret girlfriend. Rebecca was determined to defeat the circles. They gave Sadie a slightly slutty demeanor, and slutty did not fit in with Sadie's superior breeding and upbringing.

Squeeze, smudge. Squeeze, smudge. Blend, blend, blend.

Many squeezes, smudges, and blends later, Sadie appeared before her handmaidens, brighter-eyed and bushier-tailed than she had ever looked before. The concealer blended seamlessly into the foundation under the expert fingers of a teenage girl. Women at Caltech were not particularly obsessed with their physical appearance, but when it came to makeup, they had to keep their skills honed for their male friends and little brothers.

Sadie's bright eyes widened as she backed away from the jaws of an eyelash curler. It looked more like a torture device than a cosmetic tool. It looked like an enucleator.

"Not yet!" screeched Rebecca. "Don't forget the eyeliner and eye shadow!"

"Oops!" replied Sarah.

She backed away from the pedestal. She had been so eager to employ the enucleator that she had forgotten all about the eye makeup.

Sadie held still as Rebecca applied eyeliner and eye shadow. She struggled to recall everything she had ever absorbed about eye makeup, looking for an excuse to avoid the enucleator.

Consistent with Sadie's virginal demeanor, the eyeliner and eye shadow were neutral-toned with a slight hint of pink that brought out Sadie's beautiful hazel eyes. Neutral tones radiated a soft natural look that went well with Sadie's conservative schoolgirl outfit. If applied, the enucleator would create an evening look. An evening look would necessitate bolder colors of eye makeup, such as purple or gold, that were not to be found in Sarah's makeup kit. They would have to search all over Ricketts House, potentially delaying Sadie's arrival at the debutante ball. It was settled. The enucleator would have to wait for another opportunity.

Sadie snapped out of her reverie, immensely relieved that her handmaidens had reached the same conclusion. Sarah stowed away the enucleator, satisfied that Sadie's long brown eyelashes were feminine enough for a casual look. They would only require a light coating of mascara.

One by one, mascara, blush, and lipstick were conservatively applied. The light pinks of the blush and lipstick complemented the neutral tones of the eyeliner and eye shadow, enhancing Sadie's natural appearance.

It was time for hair.

Sadie had gotten her annual haircut on her birthday in October, which meant that at her rate of hair growth, her hair was returning to its long muppety roots. Rebecca parted Sadie's thick brown hair down the middle and gathered up the strands on the left side while Sarah gathered up the strands on the right side. They tied the strands into pigtails, adorning the pigtails with clusters of thin red ribbons that curled along with the strands of curly hair. Everyone agreed that while the look wouldn't work for everyone, it was quite fetching on Sadie.

Before Sadie could hide in her closet, her escorts, Father Eric and Brother Keith, arrived to laud her appearance. They gaped in shock, pools of spittle collecting at the corners of their lips. Besides being a star student at their school, St. Augustine's Academy for the Mentally Deranged, Sadie was also quite a beauty. The transformation was earth-shattering. It was like one of those movies, in which the ugly duckling dork girl takes off her glasses and reveals the beautiful swan-like creature within. There was no doubt in anyone's mind that Sadie was going to be the belle of the ball.

* * *

Princess Grendelin spied on the Dabney House Drag Competition from the roof, specifically from the gutter between the roofs of Dabney House and Fleming House. She wouldn't miss this for the world.

The Dabney House Drag Competition was an annual tradition held in much esteem by the students of Caltech. No one had ever done a statistical study on the subject, but cross-dressing appeared to be an excellent stress reliever for the cross-dressers and spectators alike.

The Princess focused the lenses of her 50X binoculars. She scanned them through the crowd, eventually coming to rest on the slender form of a pretty teenage girl. The girl stared directly at the Princess through the binoculars. She smiled toothily. Her lips sparkled with the glitter that Princess Grendelin had added at the last minute, before Lady Sadie, who had cleared inspection in Ricketts House, could hope to clear inspection in The Pit.

The gong bellowed into the fragrant spring night. The competition was about to commence.

The competition consisted of three rounds. Each of the seven houses was allowed to enter four contestants. In each round, half of the contestants would be retired. Three judges would score the contestants on their beauty, femininity, and charm. Unlike the Miss America Pageant, the Dabney House Drag Competition did not require the contestants to speak. They had only to strut their stuff and look pretty, which they did to extremely varying degrees.

In the final round, the judges would crown a second runner-up, a first runner-up, and a winner out of the seven remaining contestants. Although the competition was judged, the spectators could attempt to sway the judges. They could boo and hiss, or they could cheer and clap. In the end, the Dabney House Drag Competition would turn out to be an exercise in democracy. The most popular contestant, according to the spectators, would win.

Princess Grendelin licked her lips nervously as the first contestant took the catwalk. She was nervous, because she knew that Sadie deserved to win, but she didn't know if the judges and spectators would award such an honor to a mere freshman. Besides, Ricketts House was up first. Everyone knew that being first was a disadvantage in any judged competition.

Marie Curie lumbered down the catwalk to a smattering of boos. She had chosen a pair of truly offensive jugs to distract the judges from her full dark beard and Neanderthal-like features. There was no question that she would not survive the first round.

She was followed by Queen Randy, who sported ten or twelve piercings in each of her lips. While her lip piercings and noserings were un-lady-like, her long blue hair mitigated their effects in the eyes of the judges. It was shiny and sleek, unlike most of the hair-dyeing jobs that pervaded the bathrooms of Ricketts House. The Queen had coiled the strands into an impressive coiffure atop her head, bedecked with a tiara of delicate golden ornaments that tinkled with her cat-like movements. As a senior who had never won the Drag Competition, this was her last chance at glory. The crowd roared their approval.

Princess Grendelin sighed unhappily. She didn't like the idea of Sadie following such a popular contestant. It was sure to be a let-down in the eyes of the spectators.

Sadie climbed daintily onto the catwalk and paused at the far end for dramatic effect. Many in the crowd noted the aesthetically pleasing proportions of Sadie's figure. She was not tall, but she had long slender limbs that she carried gracefully at her sides. Her knee-high white stockings set off her slim legs below the hem of her skirt, which could stand to rest a little higher on her thighs. Most importantly, her breasts were small and perky and realistic. One imagined that they would be firm to the touch.

With a deep breath that emphasized the rising of her chest, Sadie made her way down the catwalk. She carefully placed one foot in front of the other in a prancing strut that carried her to the judges' end of the platform. At the terminus, she twirled about - one foot on the catwalk, one foot in the air, her shiny black Mary Janes glistening in her wake.

The crowd cheered uproariously, the cheers exceeding the ones that had come before. One of the besotted spectators launched a handful of red rose petals onto the catwalk, towards the object of his admiration. Competition rules stated that no spectators were to interfere with activities on the competition floor, but in this case, competition security neglected their appointed duties. They, too, were besotted with the lovely creature.

Roars died down as the next contestant took the catwalk. Princess Grendelin tuned out and took a sip of apricot nectar. She couldn't understand why Sir Rubik didn't like it. It tasted just as mildewy as his beloved pumpkin ale.

The gong bellowed again, signaling the start of the second round. Queen Randy and Lady Sadie were the only surviving contestants from Ricketts House.

This time, Sadie was up first. Princess Grendelin dried her palms on her skirt. She hoped that her coaching was about to pay dividends.

Sadie chose a lively caper for her catwalk performance in the second round. Her pigtails bounced. Her ribbons flounced. At the judges' table, she conjured a round purple lollipop out of thin air and licked it lightly with the tip of her tongue. Having met her expectations of sweetness, the lollipop was sucked all the way into her mouth, her lips wrapping themselves around its luscious candied surface. She extracted the wet lollipop from her mouth and licked away the sugary residue that coated her lips. She made eye contact with the judges, who, transfixed with her magical performance, could hardly lift up their placards to broadcast their approval.

Princess Grendelin watched with a huge smile as the spectators went wild, tossing rose petals onto the catwalk from every direction. She was indeed the best teacher in the world, and Lady Sadie was indeed her best student.

Before the Princess could pry the smile off her face, the gong bellowed for the final round. The time of reckoning had arrived.

As the only remaining contestant from Ricketts House, Sadie was again up first. Princess Grendelin stretched out her sore facial muscles in preparation for the coming triumph of her charge.

Sadie ambled down the catwalk with her hands on her hips, her hips swaying back and forth, the swaying mesmerizing the spectators. Again, out of thin air, she conjured a large peacock feather. She twirled the feather over her face, then over her neck. One of the buttons of her blouse, which had been tightly buttoned in the earlier rounds, was undone at the top. Sadie was coming out of her shell, as young women were expected to do at their debutante balls.

At the judges' table, she glanced skywards, batting her long mascaraed eyelashes as she let the feather slip out of her fingers. The feather drifted slowly to the catwalk.

"What, oh what, was Sadie to do now?" the spectators wondered in their collective Galaxian consciousness.

Sadie touched her little finger to her bottom lip, curling down the edge of her lip to reveal a row of pearly white teeth. She thought and thought and thought for a good long while, wagging her pigtails back and forth, before she came up with a satisfactory solution.

With a shy smile, she bent over, her arms and legs stretching out to their full length, as she reached for the feather with her delicate fingers. She crossed one leg over the other and brushed the catwalk surface with her fingers, showing off her pliable figure. She plucked the feather off the floor, but it slipped out of her hands ungratefully. She tried again, alas, with no success. On the third try, she swooped down upon the feather, her skirt flying up all around her, and snatched up the wayward follicles. She blew away imaginary specks of dust as she inserted the feather into her equally imaginary cleavage and proceeded to shuffle down the catwalk self-consciously, embarassed by the hoots and catcalls of the raucous spectators.

The President of Dabney House leaped onto the platform. He grabbed the microphone, speaking for all the judges, contestants, and spectators when he announced that the Dabney House Drag Competition had reached an early conclusion. There was no reason to continue. Sadie's tour-de-force had precluded the necessity. She was crowned the unanimous winner, the first freshman to win in fifteen years, an impressive feat if there ever was one.

Sadie accepted her vase of black roses with equal parts delight and humility. Her team was far less reserved. Her handmaidens spun around and around on the catwalk, jubilant over their promotion to ladies-in-waiting. Her escorts howled with side-splitting laughter, their facial muscles seizing spasmodically. For such behavior, they were stripped of their positions as Father Eric and Brother Keith of St. Augustine's Academy. They howled even louder, now exulting over their release from their onerous vows of celibacy.

Princess Grendelin jumped up and down on the roof between Dabney House and Fleming House. She was beside herself with joy.

In her exuberance, she set off round after round of illegal firecrackers. The smoke from the firecrackers found their way to the electronic nose of a smoke detector in Fleming House, where the residents had neglected to disable the uselessly annoying devices. The fire alarm crashed the party below. It sent the spectators fleeing for the exits, fearing that one amongst their number had finally lost her marbles and set the fire that would extinguish the South Houses for good.

Spencer grinned at the roof of Dabney House, waving his arms at the fleeing figure who waved her arms back at him. His moment of glory was over, but he didn't mind a bit. He was itching to wash off his uncomfortable makeup and change out of his awkward clothing. He could hardly believe his own bizarre performance. It was like a trance had fallen over him. He had exceeded everyone's wildest expectations. He rationalized it as the power of the Princess.

With a laugh and a toss of his pigtails, Spencer ran out of the Dabney House courtyard, followed by his still-howling friends. He was just as exuberant as the Princess. Young as he was, Spencer was beginning to learn something that not everyone learned before their deathbeds, that in this frothing bubble of air in the vacuum, however silly the ends and the means, bringing joy to each other was the only thing that really mattered.

* * *

Nerd speak clarifications

1) Enucleation

Thank you, CM, for introducing me to the term "enucleation". While I used to call eyelash curlers "eye removal machines", I can now call them "enucleators".

2) Marie Curie

Female French-Polish scientist, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics with her husband Pierre Curie for their studies on radioactivity. Discovered two elements, radium and polonium, for which she won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Only person to win two Nobel Prizes in scientific subjects. Linus Pauling won for Chemistry and Peace. Her daughter Irene Joliot-Curie and son-in-law Frederic Joliot-Curie also shared a Nobel Prize in Chemistry, for their work on radioactivity, when they converted elements into each other as the alchemists had tried to do for hundreds of years.

3) Galaxia

Idea of the galaxy as a single living organism introduced in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. Based on the Gaia Hypothesis, which views the Earth as a single organism with feedback mechanisms that control its many many systems. Influential in Earth Systems Science, which combines all the sciences to understand how everything works on Earth.

Note: If you feel at all dirty reading this chapter, just remind yourself that the breasts are made of pudding. As crack-ficky as this chapter it is, it is 90% reality. I apologize to all Catholics for Sadie's scandalous behavior, as well as the lack of aplomb displayed by Father Eric and Brother Keith.


	18. Chapter 18

Disclaimer 1: I do not own Criminal Minds.

Disclaimer 2: I do not own Caltech, although I did go to college there. All characters are fictional, regardless of how much they may resemble actual persons.

Author's Note: The format of this story is unusual. It alternates between 1994-1995 and 2010. I hope the weird format doesn't bother people too much, since I've already got a bunch of chapters written and plan to update regularly. I just need to proofread the chapters before I add them to the story.

Some of the chapters contain quite a bit of nerd speak, but I reserve the right to nerd speak as much as I want in a story about my favorite TV nerds. Nerd speak clarifications may be found at the end of each chapter.

This is my first ever fanfiction. Reading &/ Reviewing are much appreciated. Enjoy!

* * *

Chapter 18

July 2010

"Pierre? What are you doing here?" asked Reid.

The 6'6" man grinned and crossed his arms over his massive chest, daring Reid to repel him. He formed his thumb and index finger into the shape of a gun, pointed it at Reid's forehead, and pretended to fire. Reid conceded defeat.

"You've come to help us, haven't you?" he asked. "And you've brought your entire lab with you."

The six grad students and two undergrads waved at Reid and Garcia from their positions beside the GPS vans. They were all dressed alike, in orange T-shirts bearing the logo of the Department of Geological and Planetary Sciences.

"Tell us the truth, Spender. Is this your secret girlfriend?" asked Pierre.

Reid glared at him without answering. Garcia suppressed a giggle.

"Come on," said Pierre, "Let me introduce you to my students." "Minions!" he turned towards his students.

"Yes, Master?" they answered in unison.

"These are Drs. Spencer Reid and Penelope Garcia, current property of the Bureau, former property of the Institute, heroes of the Great Cyanide Siege of 2010. You may call him Spender," he ruffled Reid's hair, "And her..." he gestured towards Garcia.

"Garcia is fine," Garcia replied.

"Spender," Pierre addressed Reid, his tone turning serious. "I know we shouldn't have followed you, I know we shouldn't be here, I know this is a criminal investigation, big FBI stuff that the proletariat shouldn't even know about. But please let us help out on this case. We're geologists. We know everything about the desert. We can help you find Jared Wilson."

Expecting resistance, the professor prepared his counterattack as he spoke. He accessed a stack of arguments, grasping at the top argument in the pile, according to the LIFO principle - last in, first out. He was surprised by Reid's immediate acquiescence. He stood aside to let Reid address his minions.

"Thank you all for coming," Reid addressed the students. "The best way you can help us is to stay here, with the vans, and run a geological profile of the slide area," he pointed towards the southeast, 10 miles distant, where the Blackhawk Landslide rose up from the desert sands.

The parking lot of the Lucerne Valley Community Center was full of vans and SUVs, bearing the personnel of the Los Angeles Police Department, the Pasadena Police Department, the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department, the San Bernardino County Search-and-Rescue team, the Los Angeles County Search-and-Rescue team, and the California Institute of Technology. Reid had chosen Lucerne Valley, a tiny unincorporated community at the base of the San Bernardino Mountains, as the starting point for his geological profile of the Blackhawk Landslide.

For the time being, everyone was here to find Jared Wilson. The stench of politics had been replaced by the cleaner smells of scrub and sweat.

"Based on previous cases, we believe that Jared Wilson is somewhere in the slide area," said Reid.

"There is a trend in the locations of the bodies," said Garcia. "The bodies of the original victims, the ones from 18 years ago, were all recovered in the vicinity of quartz gold mines fitting a specific geological profile. The first victim was recovered near a deep mine, and the last victim was recovered near a shallow mine. We've traced several of the earlier victims, abducted between 1984 and 1987, to deep gold mines that became successively shallower as time passed. The mine trail ends in 1991, when the mines became too shallow to be documented."

"What is the significance of the mines?" asked a grad student.

"We're not sure," Reid replied. "We haven't gotten that far in our psychological profile of the UnSub," he admitted. "Right now, our first priority is finding Jared Wilson, so we need you to guess the locations of shallow gold mines in the slide area, based on their geological resemblance to the previous mines."

"Particularly the Nick Sullivan mine," said Garcia. "The Campus Creeper appears to be running his crimes in reverse, so he needs to find a mine similar to the Nick Sullivan mine. He is familiar with the desert, and he may be familiar with geology as well. He may even be a geologist."

She held up photos of Nick Sullivan and Jared Wilson to back up her words. The students peered at the photos, digesting the disturbing conclusions drawn from them.

Garcia handed Pierre a packet of crime scene photos from the Nick Sullivan mine. Pierre passed them to his students, one of whom recognized the location almost instantly. The students whispered amongst themselves, tackling the new challenge before them. They would have to break down the data and build it back up to return a list of locations for the Search-and-Rescue teams. Decomposition and synthesis, deduction and induction, science and art - all the cognitive functions of the rational cortex at work.

Reid and Garcia backed away from the GPS vans, happy to hand the technical work to the experts. Two of the vans were mobile command stations decked out with computers, instruments, and rock samples that had yet to be off-loaded into Arms Laboratory. Pierre's lab would work on the geological profile, leaving Reid and Garcia to work on the psychological profile. The police officers and search teams would spread out at the base of the Blawkhawk Landslide, performing a cursory investigation of the slide area, while waiting for further instructions from the Lucerne Valley Community Center.

It was 11:00 AM and 107 degrees. The Campus Creeper had already released Jared Wilson into the desert. If Jared Wilson were as smart as he was intelligent, he would not try to hike out of the desert under the unforgiving sun. He would wait, in the shade of an overhanging rock formation, for his fellow Techers to deduct and induct their way to him.

* * *

"If I'm not mistaken, Reid, those are breasts," said Garcia, squinting at the fuzzy frame on her computer screen.

"Are you sure?" asked Reid.

She stared at him through her glasses.

"Good thing we started fresh with the profile," he murmured, scratching his neck.

He leaned in closer, his face next to her face, their complexions blanching in the light of the computer screen. The black SUV they had driven into the desert was another mobile command station, decked out with all manner of devices that the government used to spy on its citizens.

The agents of Big Brother stared at the fuzzy frames of the video. The video had been donated to the FBI from Blacker House, specifically from the roof of Blacker House, where one of the Moles had set up his personal surveillance station. He had built a shack on the roof and filled it with electronic equipment that he used to monitor his fellow Techers through the CCTV cameras that he had installed at various locations on campus.

Reid and Garcia did not have time to profile the student or analyze his motives, whether he was driven by curiosity, vigilance, or paranoia, but they were glad that he had installed one of the cameras in an eucalyptus tree overlooking California Boulevard. The camera had captured a small figure, decidedly female, who had dragged a much larger figure, decidedly male, down the stairs to the street, across the sidewalk to a vehicle, into the backseat of the vehicle. The vehicle was a Jeep. The UnSub was a woman.

"How is she doing this?" asked Garcia. "Digital Video Analysis Rendering puts her height at 5'6". Jared Wilson is 6'2" and 200 pounds."

"She must be very determined," Reid mumbled.

"How did she subdue him?" Garcia continued. "Why didn't he stop her? How could he let her drug him? He's twice her size."

"I don't know," said Reid. "I guess if I were him, even if a woman were threatening me, I would still think twice about physically assaulting her. Actually, I would think millions of times. I'd end up paralyzed, which would be an advantage for the UnSub."

"Huh," said Garcia, speechless over the new data.

Reid looked out the tinted windows towards the GPS vans. He would rather work in there, on the geological profile, than in here, on the mechanism of the abduction. He envied Pierre and the students. They inhabited the world of science, where facts were facts, hypotheses were testable, and conclusions were black-and-white. He inhabited the world of humans, where truth was buried under clutter, and at given moment in his life, he couldn't tell if he was hazy or crazy or both.

Reid yawned and rubbed his bloodshot eyes. He had been up all night working on the geographical profile. Then, he had trashed it in favor of the geological profile. Now, he was working on the psychological profile, which had spontaneously combusted in his face the moment breasts entered the picture. The case was getting weirder by the minute.

Reid decided that he would not sleep until he solved the Campus Creeper case. Once, during his freshman year, he had gone without sleep for eight days, and he was sure that he was still young enough to do it.

He leaned in closer to the computer screen, invading Garcia's personal space.

Garcia didn't notice. She was busy, working to enhance the fuzzy frames of the video, looking for any tiny detail that would lead them to the Campus Creeper.

The FBI dorks huddled in their hacker cave, safe and silent in their separate trains of thought.

Breasts indicated a woman or a cross-dressing man. "A woman," Reid decided. He didn't want to touch the psychology of the cross-dressing she-male serial kidnapper until he had exhausted all other options.

Female kidnappers were rare. They usually abducted people they knew. Most of the time, they abducted their own children.

In this case, the victims were young men between 18 and 22 years of age. They did not resemble each other, but they had not been chosen for their physical resemblance, at least not in the first round of abductions. They had been chosen as victims, because they had been easy to abduct from their dorm rooms. Their non-resemblance did not preclude them from being substitutes for the UnSub's own son.

If the UnSub had a college-aged son in 1984, an 18-year-old son, then she would be in her sixties today. Unless she had given birth at a very young age, she would be a senior citizen.

Reid mentally scanned his database of criminal offenders, looking for offenders of the female senior citizen variety. He came up with three hits, all black widows who had poisoned their husbands for their inheritance.

"Not applicable," he thought.

If the victims were substitutes, then the UnSub must have lost her own son. Had he died in an accident? Had he been the victim of a violent crime? Had he simply gone off to college and left her behind?

"He had simply gone off to college and left her behind," Reid thought.

The idea appealed him for a reason. It was what he had done to his own mother 16 years ago. In his case, he had gone a step further, committing his mother to a mental institution in an act of cowardly betrayal.

"Why would a son abandon his mother at his earliest opportunity?" he thought.

Perhaps the UnSub had been mentally ill, like Reid's own mother. Perhaps she had been physically ill, although that was unlikely given her obvious vigor during the Jared Wilson abduction. Perhaps she had been cured in the intervening decades.

Maybe the son had taken care of his mother all his life, ever since he was a little boy, and the strain had gotten to him. Maybe he had not wanted to leave his mother at all, but he had grown up and needed to live his own life at last.

Alternatively, perhaps the mother had been perfectly healthy, but she had simply been a horrible mother. Maybe she had abused her son, emotionally or physically or sexually, and he had jumped at the chance to escape her grasp. He might have cut off all contact with her, causing her to lose her marbles and start abducting other young men as substitutes for him.

Either way, the problem lay with the mother, not with the son. Whatever the situation, he was well within his rights to leave her behind, but she was not within her rights to hurt other young men.

Automatically, as if by instinct, Reid excused the young man who had unknowingly precipitated the entire chain of events. He did not blame him for abandoning his mother. It was curious that the standards one held for oneself were so much less attainable than the standards one held for others.

"Why did she stop?" Reid asked himself, "Why did she start again?"

The gap between 1992 and 2010 was 18 years. Eighteen years was enough time for an infant to grow to adulthood. It was enough time for the UnSub to start afresh, for her to have another son, for the cycle to repeat itself, for the second son to abandon his mother, just like the first.

"She must have been a horrible mother," Reid thought.

"But why run the crimes in reverse?" he wondered, "Why not replay the crimes from the first victim to the last victim?"

The last victim had been abducted in August 1992. It would have been difficult for a heavily pregnant woman to stuff a large male, like Nick Sullivan or Jared Wilson, into her vehicle. She may have been pregant at the time of the last abduction, but she had not been very far along in her pregnancy. Her second son would have been born in the spring of 1993, most likely between March and May. He had turned 17 a few months ago, so it was unlikely that he had already gone off to college and left his mother behind.

"Unless he's like me," Reid thought. "Not even exactly like me," he realized. "Most colleges have a couple of 16- or 17-year-olds in the freshman class."

If the son had already abandoned his mother, he would be a freshman this summer, a rising sophomore, like Jared Wilson. If the son had not yet abandoned his mother, if he was merely planning to abandon his mother, whether in his mind or her mind, he would be a freshman in the fall.

Eighteen years ago, the UnSub had been blessed with a gift that she did not deserve. She had stopped abducting young men as substitutes for her first son, when she had been blessed with the gift of a second son. If she were smart, she would not allow her second son to follow the example of her first son. She would not allow him to go off to college and leave her behind.

"This time around, the last victim will be her own son," Reid muttered to himself.

"The first victim was her own son," Reid muttered to Garcia. "His body has never been found."

"LIFO," he spoke clearly.

No one answered him. He was alone in the SUV, twisting his mind around a shaky profile that had passed through no one's brain but his own. He never trusted himself on any profile, especially not on a profile spooled out of his limbic system. Profiling was an art, and Spencer Reid was only a scientist.

While the first scientist had stared into space, the second scientist had recovered something from the bottom of her own stack. She had run off towards the GPS vans, eager to re-enter the world of science, leaving her partner to sort through the world of humans. In the world of humans, truth and clutter looked the same, so it was not like looking for a needle in a haystack. It was more like looking for a needle in a pile of needles.

* * *

"Anything so far?" asked Garcia, inhaling the cool air in the van.

"Nothing," said Pierre. "We've given three locations to the Search-and-Rescue teams, and they've searched two of them already. They found the mine shafts, but no sign of Jared Wilson so far. One of the teams is on its way to the third location."

"Where exactly are the locations?" Garcia asked.

"Three locations at the eastern base of the slide, two in the northeastern quadrant, one in the southeastern quadrant," answered a grad student.

"What about the top of the slide?" she asked.

"We haven't profiled the top of the slide," Pierre replied. "That seems like an unlikely location for mining."

"Even so, I think there might be mine shafts up there," Garcia shook her head. "Miners in the '30s used to tell stories about drilling at the top of the slide. I think some miners made up the stories to keep other miners away from their claims. They embellished their mining activities into extraterrestrial devices drilling and disappearing into the rocks."

"Like 'The War of the Worlds'?" asked an undergrad.

"Yeah," Garcia agreed. "I thought so too, until I noticed several features in aerial images that could be mine shafts carved into the top of the slide."

"Features as small as mine shafts aren't visible in ordinary aerial images," said Pierre.

"These weren't ordinary aerial images," Garcia replied. "They came from military databases. They were much higher resolution than publicly available images."

"I did a lot of hacking when I was at Tech," she explained. "I was initially curious about Area 51, but then I discovered other suspicious sites in the desert, so I eventually hacked into the miliary databases at Edwards Air Force Base."

"Really?" asked an undergrad, "That's awesome!"

She looked around excitedly, tapping her fingers against the back of a seat, simulating a spate of rapid-fire typing. She looked like she needed some time in solitude to pursue her own interests.

"The images came with descriptions of the rock formations on the slide," Garcia said. "I don't know anything about geology, but I do remember the names of the rocks. The names were really weird, so they stuck in my mind. Diabase, granodiorite, gneiss, dolomite, and limestone...not just limestone, something called brecciated limestone."

"Brecciated limestone," said a grad student. "The Blackhawk Landslide is made of brecciated limestone, the Pennsylvanian Furnace Limestone. The slide used to be part of Blackhawk Mountain, 4,000 feet up in the San Bernardino Mountains, before it slid off into the desert."

"Yeah, he's right," interjected another student. "The slide broke off in one large piece and traveled down the north slope of the range, like a flying carpet, before landing on the desert floor. The southwestern quadrant, the one closest to the mountains, contains a boundary region between igneous rock formations and brecciated limestone formations."

"The Pennsylvanian Furnace Limestone..." Pierre began in his professor voice.

"Hold on a second," Garcia stopped him. "What exactly is brecciated limestone? How is it different from regular limestone?"

"Breccias are fragments of rocks cemented together by a finer-grained mineral matrix," said Pierre. "Breccias can be formed by many kinds of geological processes, but the Pennsylvanian Furnace Limestone was formed by hydrothermal processes. Faulting in the igneous rock formations allowed hydrothermal fluids to flow up from below. The hot water boiled when it encountered the low-pressure fault zone, and the steam acted like an underground geyser, collapsing the rocks above and breaking them into fragments that were cemented together over time."

"Hydrothermal fluids? Hydrothermal fluids containing dissolved minerals?" Garcia asked.

"Yes!" said an undergrad. "Hydrothermal fluids often leave behind breccia-associated ore deposits!"

"So the top of the slide in the southwestern quadrant matches the geological profile for the Nick Sullivan mine?" Garcia asked.

"It does!" Pierre replied. "Where's the nearest search team?" he gestured towards his students.

"The Stevenson brothers are at the northwestern base of the slide," said a grad student.

"We can get there faster than they can," another student offered. "The Stevensons left their SUV at an abandoned mining camp south of Highway 247. They're on foot, and it'll take them awhile to hike to the southwestern quadrant and climb up the slide. We can drive down there right now. I'm sure we'll get there before they do."

"Yes, I'm sure we'll get there faster!" said an undergrad. "Our house, Ricketts House, comes out here on pyro trips all the time, to set fires that we can't set on campus without burning down the South Houses. I know all the dirt roads in the area. We don't have a GPS, so I had to memorize all the maps and satellite images of the area."

"You have an eidetic memory, don't you?" Garcia asked matter-of-factly.

"Yeah," admitted the student, "Just like...uh...just like Dr. Spender?"

Garcia suppressed a snort. Pierre snorted out loud at the mention of "Dr. Spender", who chose that moment to exit the Big Brother SUV. The ten people in the van stared at Dr. Spender as he ran gimpily around the parking lot, waving his arms and pointing at something in the southeastern sky.

* * *

Nerd speak clarifications

1) LIFO

A concept in computer programming for the way information is accessed or tasks are performed by computer programs. There is a stack of tasks, and each new task is placed on top of the stack, and when it's time to perform the tasks, the program picks them up from the top, so the last task added is the first task performed. The UnSub's crimes are another application of LIFO.

2) Geology in this chapter

Most of the facts about the Blackhawk Landslide are true, including the flying carpet theory of its formation. The only thing that's embellished is how the Pennsylvanian Furnace Limestone became brecciated. It may have been through non-hydrothermal processes, but I thought the word "furnace" matched nicely with hydrothermal fluids.


	19. Chapter 19

Disclaimer 1: I do not own Criminal Minds.

Disclaimer 2: I do not own Caltech, although I did go to college there. All characters are fictional, regardless of how much they may resemble actual persons.

Author's Note: The format of this story is unusual. It alternates between 1994-1995 and 2010. I hope the weird format doesn't bother people too much, since I've already got a bunch of chapters written and plan to update regularly. I just need to proofread the chapters before I add them to the story.

Some of the chapters contain quite a bit of nerd speak, but I reserve the right to nerd speak as much as I want in a story about my favorite TV nerds. Nerd speak clarifications may be found at the end of each chapter.

This is my first ever fanfiction. Reading &/ Reviewing are much appreciated. Enjoy!

* * *

Chapter 19

May 1995

"Wake up, frosh! It's Ditch Day!"

Loud sing-song yelling invaded the morning stillness at 7:00 AM.

Spencer rolled around a few times, like an up-ended turtle trying to flip itself over, before rolling out of bed and down his ladder in one smooth motion. He poked his head out of the open window. Around the firepot stood a group of seniors, haggard but triumphant, jerking their thumbs at him and other heads poking out of other windows to get their lazy asses out of bed and down to the courtyard, stat!

It was Ditch Day. Classes were cancelled. Seniors were going off-campus. Non-seniors were doing stacks.

A stack was a game, designed and built by a senior for a team of underclassmen to complete. The goal of the stack was to get into the senior's room to claim the prizes within. Underclassmen followed a set of clues in a scavenger hunt for the key. Some of the clues required brains, others required brawn, and all required behavior even more misguided than everyday behavior at Caltech.

Cheating - power punching the door, picking the lock, breaking in through Hyperspace - was strictly forbidden.

Seniors would hide off-campus for the entire day, from 7:00 AM to 5:00 PM. Any senior caught on-campus would be duct-taped to a tree.

Spencer squinted into the early morning sunshine as he stumbled into the courtyard. He had not seen the sun at such an angle in a very long time. It didn't feel natural. It felt like he had been transported to the still-frigid lands within the Arctic Circle.

"Whose stack do you wanna do?" Keith slurred, yawning until tears rolled down his cheeks.

"Not Randy's," Sarah yawned with him, "Anyone but Randy! He'll make us get our lips pierced."

"Or our nipples," Eric suggested, imprinting a horrifying set of sensations into everyone's mind.

"What about Jamal?" Spencer suggested. "He's an engineering major, so we'll probably get to build stuff."

"Or Caitlin?" Rebecca asked. "She's a chemistry major, so we'll probably get to blow stuff up."

"Yeah!" Spencer replied excitedly, "Good thinking, Rebecca! I'd rather blow stuff up than build stuff! Ditch Day or any day!"

"Me too!" Sarah chimed in.

"OK, let's go claim Caitlin's stack before someone else gets there first!" said Keith.

The five freshmen sprinted up to Prexy Alley and signed up for Caitlin Howard's stack before anyone else could get there. They opened the envelope taped to the door and read the set of instructions within.

The first slip of paper read, "Have some milk and donuts for breakfast."

Everyone grabbed a carton of milk and a donut from the cooler on the floor.

The second slip of paper read, "Launch Millikan Pond into space. Collect photographic evidence."

Five faces froze into half-smiling half-chewing configurations, then fell, as their owners realized the difficulties of launching objects, objects such as ponds, into space.

"How are we supposed launch anything into space?" Eric asked.

"Um..." Sarah replied.

"NASA uses hydrogen and oxygen in the external tank of the Space Shuttle," said Keith. "The external tank is the big orange bullet-shaped container that disappears after the Space Shuttle goes into orbit."

"Where do those things go?" asked Sarah.

"Into the Pacific Ocean," Keith replied.

"Even if the launch takes place at the Kennedy Space Center?" asked Eric.

"Yeah," Keith replied.

"Weird..." Sarah muttered to herself.

"Why don't we use the same technique as NASA?" Spencer suggested.

"To launch Millikan Pond into space?" Eric asked incredulously.

"Yeah," said Spencer. "There's got to be a reason Caitlin chose the pond rather than a building or a sculpture. We can use the water in the pond to bubble out hydrogen gas, which reacts with oxygen gas in the atmosphere to simulate the effect of launching rockets into space."

"I think I know where this is going..." said Rebecca, catching Spencer's drift. "We need to produce hydrogen gas in a chemical reaction, from the water in the pond and..." she pointed at Spencer.

"A chemical reaction between water and an alkali metal, preferably potassium or heavier!" he answered.

"Duh! Why didn't I think of that?" Eric exclaimed, his eyes lighting up at the prospect of imminent pyrotechnics.

"Because you never pay attention in Chem 1," said Keith.

"No, you've got it all wrong," Eric defended himself. "Spender is the one who never pays attention in Chem 1. I've never seen him take a single note during lecture."

"That's because Spender is a boy genius who knows all that crap already," said Sarah. "No offense, Spender," she added.

"None taken," Spencer replied, deep in thought and failing to notice that one of his majors had been labeled "crap".

"The only problem is I'm not sure where we can get pure potassium metal," said Rebecca. "Chem 3 is cancelled for Ditch Day, so Meade Lab is closed. It's impossible to break into Meade Lab when it's locked down. None of us are working in a chem lab, so we can't get any chemicals that way. Pure potassium metal isn't just lying around all over the place."

"I think we'll have to steal it," said Sarah.

"From where? From one of the research labs?" asked Keith.

"No, from Chem 1," Sarah replied. "You know the prep room behind Gates Lecture Hall? Where the TAs set up demonstrations before lecture?"

"Yeah!" Eric exclaimed. "I peeked in there a couple of times. The cabinets are full of reagent bottles. I'm sure they have potassium in there. They used it in a demonstration once."

"It was the day you passed out drunk," he reminded Spencer, who frowned, confused about a demonstration that he couldn't remember.

"Let's go!" said Sarah.

The five freshmen sprinted across campus to Gates Lecture Hall, huffing and puffing in a trail of powdered sugar from their half-eaten donuts. They dashed down the stairs of the lecture hall, arriving at the door of the prep room to find it closed and locked. The lock was a Medeco, which would challenge even a master lock-picker, not to mention five inexperienced apprentices.

The apprentices sighed in unison, their wicked scheme blowing away in a puff of unattainable gas.

Suddenly, Spencer had an idea.

"Wait here! I'll be back in a few minutes!" he yelled, lunging up the stairs of the lecture hall.

"Where are you going?" his friends yelled back.

"Just wait! It'll only take a few minutes!" he disppeared out the door of the lecture hall.

Spencer sprinted across the arched footbridge over Millikan Pond, past the rose bushes surrounding the pond, past Millikan Library overlooking the pond, into the silent interior of Arms Laboratory. He ripped open the door to the stairwell and darted down the steps to the sub-sub-basement. He was in too much of a hurry to bother with the deathtrap elevator.

In the sub-sub-basement, Sir Rubik banged loudly on the door of The Pit. He hoped that the Princess would forgive him for waking her up so early.

"Office of Unfettered Omniscience! Speak and be heard, Human!" came the sound of a voice next to his ear.

Sir Rubik suffered a minor seizure. Then, he realized that the voice belonged to Princess Grendelin, who had installed an intercom at the entrance to The Pit.

"Hey, Princess," Sir Rubik said timidly, "Um, sorry to wake you up so early," he peered into the CCTV camera above the door.

Like the intercom, the CCTV camera was new. In Sir Rubik's one-week dereliction of duty, Princess Grendelin had installed a complete security regime around her domain.

"It's Ditch Day," Sir Rubik explained. "We're doing a stack, and we need to get into the prep room behind Gates, but we can't because it's locked."

"Say no more, Human!" replied the Princess. "This is the Office of Unmitigated Superiority! The key shall arrive forthwith!"

Sir Rubik waited while the Princess searched for the key to the prep room. He had come to her, because she owned a jewelry box filled with keys of every shape and description.

The Princess had filed the keys out of little bits of metal. She owned a key for every door on campus, except for the door of Meade Lab, where the paranoid proprietors changed the lock every weekend to prevent the students from stealing the chemicals within. For every key that was manufactured, a lock was removed from its door, disassembled, and dissected for its locking mechanism. During her freshman year, Princess Grendelin had learned the craft from one of the wise old Moles of Blacker House. Now, she was eager to pass it on, if only she could find a willing apprentice.

Using a pulley system that she had installed over Spring Break, Princess Grendelin raised a small basket up to the sub-sub-basement. Sir Rubik grabbed the key out of the basket and smiled down at the tiny up-turned face of the Princess.

"Thanks, Princess! You're a life-saver! You're the best!" he yelled down The Pit.

"And you're the most perceptive!" she yelled up The Pit.

"What would you like as your reward?" he asked.

"That you go snow-camping with me the next time it snows?" she replied.

"Yeah, sure, OK!" he agreed.

It was May, and snow was a distant wintry memory. The Knight had plenty of time, between May and November, to wean the Princess off her snow-camping habit.

Perhaps he could distract her with a star party in the desert. He could have his mother mail him his huge Celestron reflector. They could make a night of it, driving out as the air cooled, camping out under the stars, driving back as the air heated up again. They could make the desert their summer domain, just as they had made the mountains their winter domain. It was the opposite of common sense, but it made sense to them. This way, no one would be around to intrude upon their domain.

Sir Rubik snapped out of his waking dream. A long summer stretched ahead of him, and he had plenty of time to consider the possibilities.

"Foolish Human Wormbaby!" the Princess declared through the intercom.

Sir Rubik jerked his ear away from the device.

"You sign your own death warrant!" she laughed maniacally, descending into her own episode of utter madness.

Sir Rubik hid his face from the CCTV camera.

"What do you need the key for?" asked the Princess, recovering from the brief episode. "Why do you need to get into the prep room?"

"We're going to steal a bottle of potassium so we can launch Millikan Pond into space," Sir Rubik explained.

"Really?" the Princess asked excitedly, too sleepy to ponder the difficulties of the scheme. "Do you have a camera with you? Don't forget to collect photographic evidence!"

"Yeah, we do!" Sir Rubik replied. "We're supposed to take pictures for the stack."

"Is this the first time you've done a stack?" asked the Princess.

"Yeah, of course, I'm a freshman," Sir Rubik replied.

"Oh, I see..." the Princess trailed off.

"What? What is it?" asked Sir Rubik.

"Oh no, nothing, forget it!" the Princess replied.

"What's going on?" Sir Rubik yelled down The Pit. "Is there something I should know about Ditch Day?"

"Oh no, nothing," the Princess replied. "Um, have fun with Ditch Day! Don't forget to bring the film down here afterwards. I've built a darkroom on the third floor. It's got a rotating portal!"

"Wow, Princess, you really kept yourself busy while I was on my geology field trip!"

"Of course I did," said the Princess. "I had to do something to keep the voices out of my head. How was Red Rock Canyon? Did you enjoy it more than the Blackhawk Landslide?"

"Um, I'll tell you all about it later," Sir Rubik replied. "I probably won't be using the word 'enjoy'..."

"OK, have fun with your stack!" the Princess yelled and waved.

For some reason, she tilted her head back and laughed maniacally again. Sir Rubik waved goodbye with a worried expression and sprinted back to his friends in Gates Lecture Hall.

Unlike the majority of Caltech traditions, Ditch Day was as much about physical exertion as mental ingenuity or manual dexterity. While strenuous, sprinting was far superior to digging six-foot-deep graves or zip-lining off buildings in questionable harnesses.

"The key! The key!" Spencer gasped, out of breath from all the sprinting.

"That's the key?" asked Eric, pointing at a crude piece of metal with a few rounded indentations.

"Where did you get that?" asked Keith.

Spencer shook his head, still gasping for breath, distracting his friends with his gasping so they would forget their questions. He stuck the piece of metal into the lock as his friends hovered skeptically around the door. The key turned in the lock and stuck for a moment before the door clicked open. Spencer smiled widely, then remembered to continue gasping for breath, so he wouldn't have to respond to further interrogations about the source of the key. He pretended to be deaf and dumb as they entered the prep room.

The nearest lab bench held an envelope propped up against the vacuum line. Rebecca read the instructions within.

The first slip of paper read, "Congrats, frosh! You're smarter than I expected!"

Everyone snickered and patted themselves on the back.

The second slip of paper read, "Suck it, frosh! It's not Ditch Day! Get your asses ready for lecture!"

"Damn it! Goddamnit!" Keith kicked a cabinet door.

"Shit! I knew I shouldn't have gotten up this morning! They always have one or two fake Ditch Days before the real one!" Eric punched a lab bench.

Expletives filled the air, reaching a concentration of 500 ppm before they were neutralized by fatalistic acceptance.

"Oh well, at least I got up in time for math lecture today," mumbled Sarah, who was a math major and therefore never attended Math 1 at 9:00 AM.

"Ugh, let's get the hell out of here," said Rebecca, turning to exit the prep room.

All but one of her friends followed her out the door. Spencer lingered behind, searching with his eyes, then with his hands. He donned a pair of green nitrile gloves to protect his fingers from the hazardous residues coating the reagent bottles. He checked the labels on 50 or 60 reagent bottles and discovered a hole in the wall before he located the object of his heart's desire.

Spencer appeared in the doorway of the prep room, holding up a bottle of pure potassium metal. It was a large brown reagent bottle, bearing the logo of the Sigma-Aldrich Chemical Company, filled with chunks of soft gray metal, immersed in mineral oil to prevent the contents from blowing up in the moisture-laden atmosphere.

"What about Millikan Pond?" Spencer asked his friends.

"What about it?" his friends asked back.

"It's not Ditch Day, but math lecture doesn't start for another hour," he said. "We can still launch Millikan Pond into space," he clarified.

His friends exchanged glances, the same evil thought bubbling up to the surface of their Galaxian consciousness. Now that they had come this far, there was no reason to stop. There was no reason not to launch Millikan Pond into space.

"What are we waiting for?" asked Keith.

Spencer raced up the stairs with the reagent bottle. He had everything he needed - potassium metal, liquid water, and the physical laws of the universe. It was time to commit a heinous crime.

The perpetrators ran out into the morning sunshine. It took them a single second to pry open the bottle of potassium, then a second second to gather up the chunks within, then a third second to throw the chunks into the water from both sides of Millikan Pond. The body-centered cubic lattice of potassium metal encountered molecules of water and found itself unable to resist the siren song of electronegative oxygen atoms. It broke apart, bidding farewell to its free elemental form, as atoms of potassium cuddled up with atoms of oxygen to produce aqueous potassium hydroxide. The waste product, hydrogen gas, was liberated into the pond, where it bubbled up to the surface to meet the oxygen-rich atmosphere of Planet Earth. Molecules of hydrogen gas encountered molecules of oxygen gas in the superheated air over the pond. They combined to produce water in its gaseous form, steam, in a reaction that boomed into every corner of the campus. The hydrogen-oxygen flames, which emitted radiation in the ultraviolet portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, were not as spectacular as the potassium flames, which emitted radiation in the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. The potassium-water reaction filled the air with purplish white flames, while the hydrogen-oxygen reaction filled the air with decibels and decibels and decibels.

Photographic evidence was duly collected amid hooting, screaming, and booming, the likes of which had never been heard at such an early hour. Professors, who had made the mistake of arriving early for work, ducked into doorways and behind columns to avoid the fate of collateral damage. Grad students, who never made the same mistake as the professors, did not witness the event.

The perpertrators fled the scene as the flames died down. They fantasized about future escapades. In Chem 1, they had learned that the reaction of alkali metals with water became more and more violent as the alkali metal became more and more massive. In the periodic table, potassium lived below sodium, which lived below lithium. Beneath potassium, there lived rubidium, cesium, and francium, the three alkali metals heavier than potassium. Consider the possibilities!

Somewhere in Meade Lab, a chemistry professor shuddered in her slumber. The professors, who considered themselves Protectors of the Realm, had agreed to take turns guarding the laboratory from the hordes of marauding students who plotted, day and night, to raid the premises. The professors often fantasized about synthesizing mind control drugs that would convert out-of-control megalomaniacs into obedient little minions. Then, perhaps, they could go home every now and then to spend a few minutes with their familiies, without worrying about the imminent destruction of the Southern California Megalopolis.

Later that fake Ditch Day, with Princess Grendelin in The Pit, Sir Rubik fantasized about the imminent destruction of the Southern California Megalopolis. The Princess developed the photographic evidence, while the Knight wrote up an account of the event for The Tech, the weekly student newspaper.

They gloated over the fiery photos, until Princess Grendelin remembered that she had to cover her tracks in the FBI computer system, and Sir Rubik remembered that he had to finish his Chem 4 lab report.

Since it was not Ditch Day, the lab report was due in two hours. Sir Rubik climbed wearily up The Pit, muttering instructions on the way. The Princess was to install a pulley system that could support his weight, so he would no longer have to climb up and down the ladder every time he visited her. The Princess retorted that Sir Rubik could build his own Batman Grappling Hook if he was too lazy to climb the ladder. They stuck their tongues out at each other before waving goodbye.

Spencer sprinted all the way back to Ricketts House. The seniors greeted him at the entrance, patting him on the back and demanding photographic evidence for the Millikan K-Drop Experiment.

* * *

Nerd speak clarifications

1) Millikan K-Drop Experiment

K is the symbol for potassium. Please do not try this experiment at home. It is extremely dangerous!


	20. Chapter 20

Disclaimer 1: I do not own Criminal Minds.

Disclaimer 2: I do not own Caltech, although I did go to college there. All characters are fictional, regardless of how much they may resemble actual persons.

Author's Note: The format of this story is unusual. It alternates between 1994-1995 and 2010. I hope the weird format doesn't bother people too much, since I've already got a bunch of chapters written and plan to update regularly. I just need to proofread the chapters before I add them to the story.

Some of the chapters contain quite a bit of nerd speak, but I reserve the right to nerd speak as much as I want in a story about my favorite TV nerds. Nerd speak clarifications may be found at the end of each chapter.

This is my first ever fanfiction. Reading &/ Reviewing are much appreciated. Enjoy!

* * *

Chapter 20

July 2010

Brilliant white light flashed low in the southeastern sky, from the direction of the Blackhawk Landslide. The flash was followed by another, then another and another and another, with the same interval between the flashes. Then, there was a long pause, followed by another series of flashes - a flash, a short pause, then four flashes with the same interval between them.

Reid, Garcia, and Pierre all recognized it as the dot-dash pattern of Morse Code.

"The first series was a 1, then a 0!" Reid burst through the door of the GPS van.

"A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J...J, the 10th letter of the alphabet," said Pierre.

"The second series was dot-dash-dash-dash-dash, a 1," said Garcia.

"A!" the students exclaimed in unison.

"Good job, Jared!" Pierre shouted, the sound reverberating inside the van. The students backed away from his immediate vicinity as he looked around for something to slap.

"How is he making the flares?" Garcia wondered.

"Remember the parts in his room?" Reid reminded her. "Jared was building a miniature U2 spy plane to fly around campus. Some of the parts are made of magnalium, an alloy of magnesium and aluminum that shares the pyrotechnic properties of both elements. If the percentage of magnesium is high enough, the alloy can be crumbled apart and ground into a highly flammable powder. It produces brilliant white flares when burned."

"I'll radio the other teams," said Pierre. "Then, we'd like to head over there too," he looked at Reid.

"Yeah, Dr. Spender, we've already talked about it. We can get there faster than any of the other teams," said the Scurve.

"Yeah, Dr. Spender," echoed a chorus of voices around the van.

"What do you say, Dr. Spender?" Garcia asked.

Reid hesitated for a moment, then reached a decision as additional dots and dashes flashed over the slide.

Jared Wilson was using a modified version of Morse Code. Each letter of the alphabet was represented by a number between 1 and 26. A 1 was a dot followed by four dashes. A 9 was a dash followed by four dots. A 5 was five dots, and a 0 was five dashes. The other numbers - 2 and 8, 3 and 7, 4 and 6 - were opposites of each other according to the 1 and 9 pattern.

Reid found Jared's code more elegant than Morse Code. Morse code assigned an unique dot-dash pattern to each letter of the alphabet, the simplicity or complexity of the pattern depending on the frequency of the letter in the English language. Morse code was easy to interpret, but hard to remember. Jared's code was easy to interpret, and easy to remember. Reid deducted that unlike Dr. Spender, Jared Wilson did not have an eidetic memory.

Jared had modified the code even further, within the constraints of whatever was in his pockets at the time of the abduction. He did not own dots and dashes. He owned magnalium alloy, which produced one kind of flare, so he relied on the time intervals between the flares to simulate the dot-dash pattern. Short intervals separated dots, and long intervals separated dashes. The longest intervals separated the letters of his name. Jared's code contained no ambiguities as long as everything was expressed in terms of numbers.

Like Spencer Reid would have done in a similar situation, Jared Wilson was using his scientific knowledge to help himself. At Caltech, scientific knowledge was most often used for evil, but occasionally, it could be used for good as well.

"Let's go!" Reid decided.

Cheers filled the van. It was 2:00 PM and 117 degrees, and the nerds were going off to help one of their own.

* * *

The slope of the Blawkhawk Landslide rose up at Reid's feet. The angle was steep. The rocks were loose and slippery. The scrub was prickly. The operation was incompatible with kneecap reconstruction surgery. This was not a ditch.

Reid reached a decision. Given that rules did not exist at Caltech, and given that Caltech GPS vans were mobile extensions of Caltech itself, it was not a problem for Reid to hand the operation to Pierre. He unholstered his government-issue revolver and handed it to Pierre, along with a supply of bullets from his messenger bag. It was the same revolver that had once been pointed at Pierre's forehead.

Reid reached another decision. Given that seven of the victims had been abducted barefoot, and given that helicopters could not land on top of the Blackhawk Landslide, it was imperative that Reid stooped down, took off his tennis shoes, and handed those to Pierre as well. Jared was about the same height as Reid, and hiking through the desert required shoes, while sitting in a semi-sentient van did not.

Garcia peered down at her own feet. She was wearing a pair of shoes that she had purchased for their resemblance to Dorothy's ruby slippers from "The Wizard of Oz". She reached a decision of her own.

"I'll stay with Spender," Garcia said to Pierre.

"Good, I was hoping you'd say that," Pierre replied. "Poor Spender can't be left here, alone and unarmed, in his mismatched socks," he pointed down at Reid's pink and green socks.

"Fine," Reid pouted, hiding the fact that he was secretly pleased not to be left alone in the desert. "Be careful with that," he pointed at the revolver, "Just in case..."

"It's OK, Spender, I'm a card-carrying member of the NRA," said Pierre.

"Really?" asked Reid, "I didn't know that!"

"I don't really flaunt the fact in Pasadena," Pierre explained. "But I grew up on a farm in Idaho, remember? Back in college, I used to avoid going home during the summers so my parents couldn't conscript me into farm work, but I did miss my guns. Guns are my life! And rocks too! Guns and rocks forever!"

Garcia hid her face behind Reid's back. A year ago, she would have fled at the mention of the NRA. Today, she merely whimpered into Reid's shoulder blades, seeking protection from the gun nut with the geology hammer.

Ironically, shooting someone in the forehead had eased Garcia's life-long fear of guns. Back in January, Reid had offered to replace his revolver with a different gun, but Garcia had rejected his offer, knowing that he was most comfortable with the revolver. She didn't even mind seeing it everyday, knowing that it was the same revolver that had killed Dr. Brian Ellery during the Great Cyanide Siege of 2010.

Sometimes, Garcia wondered if killing someone had dehumanized her, sharpened her into harder materials that she did not wish to become. Then, Reid would step into her hacker cave, spewing out a mouthful of database searches for her to run, invading her personal space as she ran the searches, and her unease would puff away. The Princess would not lose herself, as long as the Knight was there to keep it for her. She would return the favor, if only he would let her.

"You know what to do when you find Jared," Reid said to Pierre.

"Red flares," Pierre confirmed, patting his backpack, where he carried a packet of emergency signal flares. "The detectives and search teams are waiting for the signal too."

"Alright, be careful up there," Reid reminded him.

"Got it, Spender," Pierre reassured him. "I mean, yes sir, Dr. Big Brother Senior G-Man, sir!" he yelled at attention.

The professor followed his students up the scrub-covered slope as the agent yelled at him again.

"Hey, Pierre!" Reid yelled.

"Yeah, Spender?" Pierre yelled back without turning.

"Geology rocks!" Reid yelled.

Snorts filled the air at the extremely corny joke. First, the students snorted. Next, Pierre snorted. Then, Garcia snorted. Finally, Reid gave up and snorted along with them.

The sound of jubilant swine sent the nerds off on their noble mission. The agents of Big Brother entered a GPS van, slammed the door shut, and turned the air-conditioning up to its maximum capacity.

* * *

"You're saying that the UnSub murdered her first son when he was in college, then abducted eighteen college students as substitutes for him?" Garcia asked.

"Yes," said Reid.

"You're also saying that the UnSub is planning to LIFO her crimes, with the goal of abducting eighteen college students before murdering her second son?" Garcia continued.

"Exactly," said Reid.

Garcia whistled. "Sick," she remarked calmly.

"Sick, sick, sick, sick, sick!" she remarked less calmly. "And the psychology of such an UnSub is..." she waited for Reid to fill in the Big Blank.

"Abandonment issues," Reid suggested, "Severe abandonment issues. Have you ever heard of the helicopter parent phenomenon?"

"Of course," Garcia replied. "Helicopter parents are parents who can't let go of their kid when the kid goes off to college. They're constantly interfering in their kid's life, from thousands of miles away in some cases. They'll call the professor if the kid gets a bad grade or complain to the Dean if the kid has roommate issues. They'll even follow the kid's courses online. They'll buy the textbooks, study the material, do the problem sets, take the exams. It would be enough to drive someone, anyone, insane."

"I mean, it would be enough to drive the kid insane," she clarified. "The parents are already insane."

"It's certainly an unhealthy set of behaviors," Reid agreed. "It's the parents' way of dealing with the abandonment they feel when their child leaves home, especially if the child leaves behind an empty nest."

"So you think the UnSub is a helicopter parent?" asked Garcia. "How many helicopter parents murder their own children?"

"Oh no, sorry, that's not what I meant," said Reid. "I meant that the UnSub dealt with abandonment in an unhealthy manner, but clearly, her methods were far more extreme than helicopter parenting, which is a fairly common phenomenon. The abandonment is the trigger for the behavior, so the abandonment is the foundation for the profile."

"When his family was murdered in a carjacking, Brian Ellery shut himself off from the external world and drowned himself in intellectual pursuits," Reid continued.

"Yes, drowned himself to the point that he couldn't tell the difference between running an experiment and killing a roomful of people," said Garcia.

"In his case, his family didn't abandon him. They were stolen from him, killed by a carjacker, who was never caught and never paid for his crimes," said Reid. "In this case, the UnSub's family, her first son, abandoned her after he went off to college. I'm not sure whether he abandoned her in reality, or whether he merely abandoned her in her own mind. People have a way of distorting reality whenever it's convenient to do so. Most people spend most of their time being irrational."

"Even you?" asked Garcia.

"Especially me," answered Reid.

The Princess spotted a chink in the Knight's shining coat of armor.

"So the UnSub's reaction was the opposite of Brian Ellery's reaction," Garcia said. "When her family abandoned her, the UnSub reached into the external world and grabbed what wasn't hers. She committed crime after crime to cover up the pain of abandonment, whether real or imaginary. She must have known what she was doing if she did it eighteen, now nineteen, times."

"Brian Ellery wasn't an evil sadistic man," she continued. "He was ill, detached, confused. What about the Campus Creeper?"

"I don't know," said Reid, "It's hard to tell. So far, we've built a profile based on conjectures. Every time we assign a data point to the UnSub's psychology, we create a bifurcation in the profiling tree. Most of our conjectures are based on geological data, not psychological insight, so any one of them could point us to the wrong leaf in the tree. We've made so many conjectures that we have scores of parallel profiles, like parallel universes, and we don't know which universe we're living in."

"Like that TV show 'Sliders'?" Garcia asked. "The one in which boy genius Quinn Mallory, distinguished researcher Professor Arturo, and their friends slide through all kinds of parallel Earths, each more dystopian than the last? Their timer device broke on the first slide, and they lost the coordinates to their own Earth, and they never found their way back home."

"Yes!" Reid realized, "Exactly like 'Sliders'! One of the themes of that show was whether a person would lose himself if he was constantly putting himself into parallel universes, running around from world to world and meeting his double in some of the worlds. One time, the sliders did find their way home, by accident, but they failed to recognize it as their home Earth and slid off into another Earth when the vortex opened. Another time, they thought they had found their way home, but it turned out to be a nearly identical facsimile. The Golden Gate Bridge was blue! Professor Arturo had an evil double, and the sliders never figured out if it was the evil twin or the good twin who slid along with them into the next world."

"Then, Professor Arturo dies in Season 3," Garcia complained. "I loved the Professor, but I had a major crush on Quinn Mallory. He was a hot boy genius!"

"Of course you did!" said Reid. "I had a crush on Wade Wells," he admitted. "She was hot as evil murdering Wade in that parallel Earth dominated by young people. Everyone over 30 had a curfew."

"That was a great show," he reminisced. "We watched the Season 1 finale in The Pit, remember?"

"Yeah, after you and your friends launched Millikan Pond into space," Garcia air-quoted. "I contributed to that little adventure, you know. If it wasn't for my key..." she trailed off smugly.

"And I didn't even have to go snow-camping with you afterwards," said Reid. "Oh thank you, Bureau, thank you, Big Brother...I love Big Brother," he unfocused his eyes and smiled in a lopsided indoctrinated manner. "Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming..."

"Programming in which we're not sure if the UnSub is a woman or a cross-dressing man, if the UnSub has sons or not, if the UnSub is abducting college kids as replacements for his or her may-or-may-not exist son or sons?" Garcia summarized the situation. "We're also in the dark about the significance of the mines, or the significance of releasing the victims near the mines, or the significance of dumping the victims near the mines after they're already dead. And it just so happens that the mines from the original cases trend upwards over time, like some kind of ramp that a zombie would crawl up, like the creepy little girl from that movie 'The Ring'."

"I've never seen that movie," said Reid.

"It's about this videotape that scares people to death, but no one knows why until they watch the tape, after which they also die within seven days," Garcia explained. "At the end, the main character's love interest watches the tape and discovers that a girl crawls out of a well, then across the ground, then out of the TV screen into his living room. He dies of fright."

Reid gaped in horror.

"The girl's mother pushed her down a well to kill her, but she didn't die until seven days later. The videotape is her way of reaching out to the world, to tell the story of the wrongs committed against her."

"Oh, that's wonderful, thank you for that story," said Reid. "I don't think I'll ever un-hear it, thanks."

"The girl's name is Samara," Garcia added.

"Oh good, Samara, I don't think I'll un-hear that name either," said Reid. "Thanks again, Princess."

"No problem," said the Princess. "Now, back to the profile," said Garcia, "Um, where exactly were we?"

"We were on the part where the mines form an ascending ramp from the first victim to the last victim," Reid remembered. "We're assuming that the UnSub's own son is dead, and his body is trapped at the bottom of a mine shaft that's deeper than all the mine shafts near the other victims. The ramp is for his body to crawl up, like the girl's body out of the well."

"I was just kidding about the ramp," said Garcia. The idea sounded insane, now that it had been articulated back to her.

"What if the UnSub is like the mother from 'The Ring'?" Reid asked. "What if she pushed her son down a mine shaft? Maybe she felt guilty about it afterwards, so she built a ramp for his body to crawl up? A ramp composed of other mines and other victims?"

"Do you know how many bifurcations you've just created? The number of parallel universes is growing exponentially." said Garcia.

"It's possible if the UnSub is mentally ill. The delusion isn't even that weird. It's logical and self-consistent," Reid defended the idea.

"OK, let's assume that the UnSub built a ramp for her son's skeletal remains to crawl up," Garcia succumbed to insanity. "What about the other side of the coin? What is her current delusion? Why is she abducting more victims and plotting to murder her second son?"

"Her second son may be an inadequate replacement for the first," Reid conjectured. "Maybe the UnSub is LIFO-ing her crimes to exchange her second son for the first. It's like proof-by-symmetry."

"And the bifurcations keep coming," said Garcia. She opened and closed her fingers left and right in the air, demonstrating the birth of new parallel universes, each Big Bang adding another leaf to the profiling tree.

"Seriously, what if this is all true?" asked Reid.

"What are the chances that all of these conjectures are true? Do you really want me to multiply it out?" asked Garcia.

"No, not really," Reid admitted. "But if they were true, we might have a way to stop the UnSub."

"What way?" asked Garcia.

"If it's her first son that she really wants, then we can make a deal," Reid replied. "If we apply geological profiling again, to the entire Mojave Desert, we might be able to locate the body."

"You want to dig up a body from the bottom of a mine shaft and present it to the UnSub as a gift?" Garcia summarized yet again.

"Yes," said Reid. "This way, the UnSub won't have to LIFO all the crimes between Nick Sullivan and Michael Rory. She can jump to the end of the mine trail. She gets her son. We get her. Everyone else is safe."

Garcia shook her head. "No deals, Reid," she said. "Making deals with an UnSub is never a good idea. Remember Gideon and Frank?" she reminded him, purposefully neglecting to mention Hotch and Foyet in the same breath.

"I know, I know," said Reid. "You don't have to look at me like that. I promise, I'm not going to fly off the handle and cuddle up to the UnSub. But think about it for a minute. How else are we going to catch the Campus Creeper? Are we going to sit around and watch her escalate her crimes? Locate each new victim through geological profiling? Geological profiling was invented by us, this morning!"

"There's got to be another way," said Garcia, "We can't make deals with an UnSub."

"You're right," Reid agreed. "We'll interview Jared Wilson before we go any further. He's the only living victim. Hopefully, he'll be able to give us a detailed description of the UnSub. I'm just trying to think a few steps ahead, in case she escalates her crimes faster than we anticipated."

"Hotch would tell you to take it one step at a time," said Garcia.

"Gideon wouldn't," Reid countered.

"Gideon isn't around," said Garcia.

"Neither is Hotch," Reid retorted.

Stalemate.

"No deals," Garcia broke the silence. "We'll find another way. We'll think about it some more. The Campus Creeper isn't going to abduct another victim right away. This is her first failure, so she might give it all up when she finds out that Jared Wilson survived the abduction. We have time to draw up a new profile."

"Or millions of new profiles," Reid sighed.

In his head, he agreed with Garcia. She was rational, and he was not. In his heart, he was himself. Rationality did not live in the heart.

"She's not a profiler," Reid thought to himself. "She thinks that it's easy to build a profile, that it's easy to formulate a plan based on a profile. It's not easy. Every profile and every plan could collapse like a house of cards..."

Before he could ruminate any further, Reid spied two events out of the corners of his two eyes. To his right, he spied a red signal flare rising into the sky, indicating that Jared Wilson had been found, alive and well, on top of the Blackhawk Landslide. To his left, he spied a cloud rising from the ground, indicating that a vehicle was kicking up sand and dust as it drove across the desert floor.

Reid climbed into the driver's seat of the GPS van. He stared at Garcia, seeing himself in her eyes.

"It's a Jeep," Garcia declared. "Go," she mouthed silently.

Reid grinned, turned the key in the ignition, and pressed his right foot, the one wearing the green sock, down upon the gas pedal.

* * *

Nerd speak clarifications

1) Sliders

Awesome sci-fi show from the '90s. Free episodes from seasons 1-3 available on Hulu.


	21. Chapter 21

Disclaimer 1: I do not own Criminal Minds.

Disclaimer 2: I do not own Caltech, although I did go to college there. All characters are fictional, regardless of how much they may resemble actual persons.

Author's Note: The format of this story is unusual. It alternates between 1994-1995 and 2010. I hope the weird format doesn't bother people too much, since I've already got a bunch of chapters written and plan to update regularly. I just need to proofread the chapters before I add them to the story.

Some of the chapters contain quite a bit of nerd speak, but I reserve the right to nerd speak as much as I want in a story about my favorite TV nerds. Nerd speak clarifications may be found at the end of each chapter.

This is my first ever fanfiction. Reading &/ Reviewing are much appreciated. Enjoy!

* * *

Chapter 21

June 1995

"Mom?" Spencer spoke into the phone.

"Spencer, did you dust your windowsill with Kryptonite today?" asked Diana.

"Yeah, Mom, I did. Don't worry about it," Spencer replied.

"Good, make sure that you do it every other day. Kryptonite degrades in ultraviolet radiation, so you need to replenish it often," she explained. "How is my baby boy today?" she asked.

"Good, Mom, I'm almost done with finals," Spencer replied. "Geology is my last final. After that, I'm free until I start my research project next Monday."

"Whatever you do, Spencer, don't join one of those military research projects. They're going to use you for their war games, then disappear you when they decide that you know too much."

"My project has nothing to do with the military, Mom," said Spencer. "I'm working on novel carbon nanomaterials. The project isn't practical enough to have military applications. We're trying to synthesize a variety of materials harder than diamond."

"Diamond, from the Greek word adamas, meaning unbreakable," said Diana. "An allotrope of carbon, the hardest naturally occurring material, forged at high temperatures and pressures in the Earth's mantle..." she recited.

"Yep," Spencer agreed. "We're trying to synthesize nanocrystalline diamond aggregates, also known as aggregated diamond nanorods, or ADNRs for short."

"That's quite a mouthful, Spencer. You scientists really love your jargon, don't you?" Diana teased.

"I know, Mom," Spencer replied. "We scientists love our jargon, but jargon has a purpose. It makes communication more precise. My colleagues know exactly what I'm talking about when I mention ADNRs. They know that I'm talking about carbon nanomaterials synthesized from compression and/or heating of C60 fullerite powder. It's less clear if I say 'hyperdiamond', although 'hyperdiamond' sounds cooler to the layman."

"My oh my, someone's starting to sound like quite a scientist," Diana continued teasing. "Referring to his colleagues? Calling his mother a layman? The Institute is doing an exemplary job of brain-washing!"

"Mom!" Spencer complained.

"Alright, baby boy, I'll stop making fun of you for today," Diana soothed her son. "Don't forget to save one of those ADNRs for your mother. You know that diamonds are a girl's best friend, don't you?"

"Sure, Mom, I'll steal one for you from lab. When the Institute finds out, they'll send me to a re-education camp in the Yukon."

"They'll have me to contend with if they dare!" Diana proclaimed.

"Against mothers the Gods themselve contend in vain?" asked Spencer.

"You know your mother!" Diana replied, "And your Asimov too!"

"Of course, Mom, I'm me," Spencer informed his mother.

"Asimov has always been your father's favorite," said Diana. "I tried to convert him to the classics, but it didn't work. He remained loyal to his sci-fi until the bitter end."

"Well, you know, Mom, a lot of science fiction is deeper than you might think. There's some genuine human emotions..."

"Yes, let me save you the time, Spencer," Diana cut him off, "I am never reading Foundation to you."

"Dune?" Spencer asked hopefully.

"Not a chance!" Diana replied, cruelly dashing her son's hopes. "I get a headache every time I read about those Mentats and Ixians and Tleilaxu Face-Dancers. Not to mention Arrakis the Desert Planet and the Fremen and the sandworms. And don't forget 'The Spice'! The whole thing reads like some hippie's acid trip."

Spencer sighed dramatically into the phone. His mother did not share his taste in science fiction. He had gotten that from his father, the one who could remain loyal to his sci-fi, but not to his family. William Reid had taken his Asimov first editions with him when he had abandoned his family, nearly four years ago.

"Do you miss your father, Spencer?" Diana suddenly asked.

No answer.

"I miss him," Diana admitted. "He was weak, and he didn't deserve us, but I'd be lying if I said that we were better off without him."

No response.

"You can tell your mother, Spencer," Diana comforted her son. "You can tell me if you miss your father."

Not a word.

At that moment, a loud ringing sound invaded Diana's serene study.

"Why do they ring that thing every time we talk on the phone?" she asked her son.

"Sorry, Mom! Gotta go!" Spencer excused himself. "The sophomores are ringing the brake drum, and this is our last chance to get it back before we become sophomores too!"

"Alright, Spencer, be careful and remember what I told you about the Kryptonite," Diana reminded him.

"Yeah, I will, Mom. Gotta go! Bye!"

Spencer hung up and poked his head out of the open window. Leave it to the sophomores to ring the brake drum during Finals Week, when half the freshman would be working on their exams. Still, they had saved him from his mother's interrogations.

Spencer climbed out his window onto the roof overhanging the first floor. He climbed up the ladder onto the second floor roof, where the sophomores were gesticulating like Great Apes, taunting him with the clanging of metal against metal as they rang the brake drum ever louder.

Spencer teeter-tottered after them on the roof. He was alone in his quest, but he didn't mind a bit. He was in the mood for a fight.

* * *

Colorado Boulevard was abuzz with activity on a Friday evening in June. There were droves of teenagers roaming the streets, wallowing in their summer freedom. There were couples, young and old, enjoying a stroll in the cool night air. Over on Green Street, one block to the south, the nerds were out and about as well, bored out of their minds after the conclusion of Finals Week.

In their ennui, the nerds had turned to breaking and entering.

"Rube?" asked Princess Grendelin. "Are you sure this is a good idea?"

Sir Rubik wiggled his way through the window of a large building in the Pasadena Civic Complex. He vanished through the window, then poked his head out of it to gaze down at the Princess.

"Of course!" he replied. "Why would they leave the window open if they didn't want us to come in?"

"Um, I don't think they left the window open so we could break in and play broomball in the dark," the Princess suggested.

"Poop!" Sir Rubik replied.

This exceedingly mature declaration jolted the Princess out of her half-hearted misgivings. Twisted logic or not, broomball in the dark was too appealing to pass up. She handed the brooms and balls to Sir Rubik, who grabbed them out of her hands and offered his own hands to pull her through the window.

The Pasadena Skating Rink was closed for renovation, which meant that now was the perfect time for the Princess and the Knight to make it their very own. Unfortunately, a set of double doors separated the Zamboni garage from the ice surface. The doors were secured with chains on the far side.

"The time has come, Apprentice," said the Master. "Your time of glory has come..." she handed him a set of miniature tools.

"As you wish, Master. Thank you, Master," the Apprentice replied, reverently accepting the tools in a manner befitting the occasion.

As the Master watched, the Apprentice loosened the screws over the hinges at the top and bottom of the left side door panel. The panel shifted against the frame and opened a crack, not wide enough for anyone to fit through. "No matter," shrugged the Apprentice, proceeding to unscrew the hinges from the right side door panel. When the panels were no longer attached to anything, the Master and the Apprentice activated their collective brawn to shift the door against its frame, opening up a crack wide enough for the Master to squeeze through. On the far side, the Master picked the lock, unraveled the chains, and pried apart the panels. The Apprentice screwed the panels back into the frame before passing through the open doorway to join the Master. The Master replaced the chains and secured the lock. With a sharp snap of her fingers, the Master promoted the Apprentice to Journeyman.

"Wow!" exclaimed the Journeyman. "I've always wanted to have the rink all to myself!"

"Yeah, me too!" the Master agreed. "I hate it when those snotty little hockey children are darting around all over the place. It makes me want to skate over their snotty little fingers."

"I thought you didn't believe in violence," the Journeyman rebuked the Master.

"Oh come on, Rube, nothing in life is absolute!" the Princess excused herself, shedding the formalities of the Master. "Sometimes, you have to make exceptions!"

"Poop!" he snorted.

"Dear Sir! It would behoove you to watch your language in front of the Princess!" the Princess complained. "What is this new fascination with poop?"

"Oh, it's nothing," explained the Knight. "One of my friends, Rebecca, is working on a research project involving coprolites. She's analyzing them to figure out if T. rexes ate each other."

"Whoa, stop right there!" said the Princess. "You're telling me that the great Tyrannosaurus rex - king of the dinosaurs, lord of the reptiles, inhabitor of my most terrifying nightmares - was a cannibal?"

"Not just a cannibal!" Sir Rubik answered, "Maybe even a cannibal scavenger!"

The Princess shrank back in amazement. "And they can figure this out from poop?" she asked.

"Yeah, Rebecca tells me that they can detect dinosaur proteins, specifically T. rex proteins, from samples of fossilized dung from 65 million years ago," Sir Rubik explained. "If they find certain tyrannosaur proteins at certain concentrations in tyrannosaur coprolites, it would prove that tyrannosaurs ate each other."

"Keep me posted on that," said the Princess. "That Rebecca sure is smart, unlike some people. Why couldn't you have picked a cool research project like hers?"

"My project is cool!" Sir Rubik defended his project.

"Only if you steal me one of those ADNRs when you finish making them," said the Princess. "You know that diamonds are a girl's best friend, don't you?"

"Funny, that's exactly what my mother said to me this week on the phone," Sir Rubik mused.

"Did you just compare me to your mother?" screeched the Princess. "Do I look like someone's mother?" she continued screeching.

"No, no, no, I didn't mean it like that!" Sir Rubik scurried back.

Scurrying back, while a tried-and-true method for escaping the wrath of royalty, was incompatible with the slippery ice surface underfoot.

"Thud!" went a rear end upon the ice.

"Poop!" went a distress call into the darkness.

"Swoosh!" went a duct tape ball into a hockey net.

"Scrape!" went a duct tape broom against the ice.

"Woohoo!" went another duct tape ball into the net.

"Boing!" went a duct tape ball off the metal frame of the net.

"Whack!" went a broom against a ball.

"Goooooooal!" went a ball into the net.

"Ahem!" went a throat clearing from the bleachers.

Silence.

The Princess and the Knight stared at each other through their glasses, their brooms and balls dropping to the ice. The Princess grabbed the Knight by the arm and pulled him lower to the ice surface. Together, they scurried away from the unfamiliar throat clearing, towards the wall between the bleachers and the ice, onto the side of the rink opposite the throat clearing. Over the wall and past the benches they fled, out the door of the rink, down the deserted hallway, out the door of the building, across a wide walkway, through the open doorway of another building.

Footsteps failed to materialize behind them. No additional throat clearing was heard.

On this cloudy night in June, on Green Street, no one would not be arrested for breaking and entering, which meant that everyone was free to commit the crime of trespassing.

* * *

"Where are we?" asked Sir Rubik, looking around the flower-carpeted lobby of his refuge.

"The Pasadena Civic Auditorium," Princess Grendelin replied.

She wandered through the double doors into the main auditorium. The seats near the front carried white placards bearing the names of Hollywood celebrities. The auditorium was pompously decorated for the People's Choice Awards this coming Sunday, and the VIPs had been assigned seats just below the stage.

The Princess rearranged the seating assignments according to her whim.

She placed Alex Trebek, the host of "Jeopardy!", amidst the cast of "Friends", with Jennifer Aniston on one side and Courtney Cox on the other. She hoped that Jennifer and Courtney would kiss Alex during the awards ceremony.

She placed Tom Hanks, the star of "Forrest Gump", amidst the cast of "ER", with George Clooney on one side and Noah Wyle on the other. She hoped that George and Noah would kiss Tom during the awards ceremony.

She placed Roseanne and Whoopi Goldberg next to each other, with no one near them, not in front or behind or on either side. She hoped that Roseanne and Whoopi would break out into a vicious hissing cat-fight during the awards ceremony.

Sir Rubik stood aside and watched the Princess rearrange the seating assignments. He didn't recognize any of the names, so he didn't understand the logic behind the way the Princess had "improved" the seating assignments.

"All set!" the Princess announced.

She hopped up onto the stage and addressed the empty auditorium.

"I...I..." she cried, trails of imaginary mascara coursing down her imaginarily berouged cheeks. "I can't express how honored I feel to receive this award," she continued fake-crying. "I would like to thank...to thank the voters...and...and...my family," she maintained the facade. "First of all, my noblest Knight Sir Rubik...Then, my devotest Apprentice Rube...And finally, my belovedest bestest Friend Little Rubert!"

"Little Rubert?" asked Little Rubert, "I'm sure there are no people named Rubert."

"Indeed not, Little Rubert is an unique gem in this transient universe of ours," replied the Princess, still teary-eyed and mascara-cheeked. "Little Rubert's life has not been easy, what with his autistic savantism and scatological obsessions, but he has always been my loyalest supporter."

"Which award are you winning?" asked Little Rubert.

"The Lifetime Achievement Award, of course," said Princess Grendelin. "Now, shush, Little Rubert, I'm not done with my speech yet."

"There's a two-and-a-half minute time limit," Little Rubert reminded the Princess.

"This is my domain, Little Rubert, and I shall decide what the time limit is!" the Princess retorted.

"You shall decide?" asked an unfamiliar voice from the back of the auditorium.

Princess Grendelin and Sir Rubik snapped their heads back, staring at the figure in the back of the room. On the plus side, the figure was not wearing a Freddy or Jason outfit. On the minus side, the figure was wearing an official uniform, the uniform of the security guards that patrolled the Pasadena Civic Complex. The unfamiliar voice and unfamiliar throat clearing probably belonged to the same individual.

The Princess grabbed the Knight by the arm and pulled him behind the heavy curtains separating the stage from the backstage area. Together, they scurried through the bowels of the auditorium, through hallways and dressing rooms and sub-stages, in circles and circles and circles, all without discovering a single exit out of the building.

The security guard followed them like a zombie in a horror movie, sweeping his flashlight over the floor as they hid behind a row of seats in a screening room. They avoided him, only to run into a second security guard sweeping a second flashlight down a cement-lined corridor. They didn't understand why he was wielding a flashlight in the brightly lit hallway, but it definitely made him more terrifying.

When the Princess and the Knight finally stumbled onto an exit, they were met by a third security guard, nameless and faceless, who turned the doorknob from the far side. The Princess and the Knight could only scurry down another set of corridors in search of an alternative exit. The first security guard waited for them in the lobby, brandishing his terrifying flashlight and a pair of handcuffs. The second security guard waited for them on the stage, brandishing his terrifying flashlight and another pair of handcuffs. The third security guard sauntered triumphantly up and down the stairs of the auditorium, terrifying even in an absence of abrandishments.

Sir Rubik conceded defeat. There was no way they would be able to escape all three security guards.

Princess Grendelin conceded nothing. She screamed her highest-pitched blood-curdlingest scream, as the four males, Sir Rubik and the security guards, all covered their ears with both of their hands. The scream was the practiced craft of years. Its original purpose had been to manipulate her parents. Whenever they heard the scream, they would automatically believe that one of her brothers had wronged her, rather than the other way around.

While the security guards dropped their heads between their knees, Princess Grendelin and Sir Rubik fled the scene, the Princess still screaming and the Knight still covering both of his ears. They lunged up the stairs of the auditorium, into the lobby, and out through the original entrance portal. Sir Rubik unlocked his bike from a bike stand, and Princess Grendelin climbed onto the handlebars. In the two days since Sir Rubik's geology final, they had become accustomed to traveling in this manner through the streets of Pasadena.

"Onwards, Mighty Steed!" Princess Grendelin directed.

Her mighty steed kicked down upon the pedals, harder and harder, until they reached the bicycling equivalent of warp speed.

"Right turn, Mighty Steed!" ordered the Princess.

Her mighty steed made a sharp right turn onto Lake Avenue, nearly running over a tiny barking terrier tied to a parking meter. Princess Grendelin hissed, cat-like, at the annoying little canine as her mighty steed sped down the hill towards her true domain. She vowed to cease and desist with both trepassing and breaking and entering for several days, at least until Sir Rubik's eardrums recovered from her Scream Attack.

Later the next morning, when the sun rose into the sky at an odd angle and all the Scurves slumbered peacefully, Sir Rubik and Princess Grendelin watched "Jurassic Park" in the Foosball Room. Sir Rubik assumed the role of Head Velociraptor, but even he was afraid of the poison-spewing dilophosaurs led by Princess Grendelin. The velociraptors and dilophosaurs engaged in a heated battle in the rainforests of Costa Rica, until a tyrannosaur burst into the room and sent them scurrying down the ladder into Snake Alley.

"I knew it!" Pierre yelled after them. "I knew you had a secret girlfriend! You can't hide the truth from me, Spender!"

"Shut up!" Spencer yelled back.

"Poop!" the girl yelled.

Spencer grabbed the girl by the arm, and they fled into the featureless hallways of Fleming House. He thanked his lucky stars - the yellow one above the horizon, the white ones above and below the horizon.

The girl was real.

* * *

Nerd speak clarifications

1) ADNRs/C60 fullerenes

C60 fullerenes are cool molecules made of 60 carbon atoms arranged in hexagons and pentagons like the surface of a soccer ball. The structure is an icosahedron. They're also known as "Buckyballs" after Buckminster Fuller, an inventor who popularized the geodesic dome, which has the same structure.

2) Dune

Sci-fi series by Frank Herbert. While Foundation is the flagship series of "hard" sci-fi, Dune is the flagship series of "soft" sci-fi, where the ideas involve more social sciences than physical sciences, but are equally fascinating.

3) Coprolites

Fossilized dung. I don't think it's possible to detect proteins in coprolites from the time of dinosaurs, but human coprolites have been analyzed to find out whether humans ate each other.

4) Brake drum

An actual brake drum from a car that the freshman and sophomores of Ricketts House fight over for no reason at all. The activity is 100% pointless but possibly stress-relieving.

5) Broomball

A game similar to hockey played with a duct tape ball and duct tape brooms on the ice without skates. Devoid of rules.

6) Against mothers the Gods themselves contend in vain?

Quote from "The Gods Themselves" by...you guessed it...Isaac Asimov. Original quote was "Against stupidity the Gods themselves contend in vain", but I think it can apply to mothers as well, as long as mothers and stupidity are not associated with each other. In the novel, an arrogant scientist refuses to acknowledge that his invention may cause the destruction of the universe.


	22. Chapter 22

Disclaimer 1: I do not own Criminal Minds.

Disclaimer 2: I do not own Caltech, although I did go to college there. All characters are fictional, regardless of how much they may resemble actual persons.

Author's Note: The format of this story is unusual. It alternates between 1994-1995 and 2010. I hope the weird format doesn't bother people too much, since I've already got a bunch of chapters written and plan to update regularly. I just need to proofread the chapters before I add them to the story.

Some of the chapters contain quite a bit of nerd speak, but I reserve the right to nerd speak as much as I want in a story about my favorite TV nerds. Nerd speak clarifications may be found at the end of each chapter.

This is my first ever fanfiction. Reading &/ Reviewing are much appreciated. Enjoy!

* * *

Chapter 22

July 2010

"Ma'am, this is the FBI," Garcia spoke into a transceiver.

"No answer on channel 6," she looked at Reid.

"Keep trying," Reid replied, "Try all the channels."

"Ma'am, this is the FBI," Garcia continued on channel 7.

"Hotch is going to kill me for this," Reid muttered to himself.

He pressed down harder upon the gas pedal, committing himself to a wild goose chase across the desert. The GPS van rumbled after the comparatively dainty Jeep, kicking up clouds of dust that scattered into the shimmering air. Desert scrub, dormant for the summer, kissed goodbye to their hopes for resurrection in the winter rains.

According to the parallel universe that Reid and Garcia had conjectured for her, the Campus Creeper was not supposed to be in the Mojave Desert. She was supposed to return to her civilized abode after releasing her victims into the desert. Yet, here she was, driving across the desert floor, so they - Reid, Garcia, and the Campus Creeper - must have all slid into a different parallel universe that someone else had conjectured for them.

"Ma'am, this is the FBI," Garcia spoke on channel 11.

"The FBI?" came a response through the transceiver.

"Yes, ma'am, the FBI," Reid spoke into the transceiver that Garcia held in front of his face. "Please stop the car."

"We can help you if you stop the car," Garcia added.

"You can help me find the kid?" asked the UnSub.

"Yes, we can help you find your son," Garcia tested one of their conjectures.

"No, not my son!" said the UnSub. "I'm looking for the kid, the kid from Caltech!"

"Why are you looking for the kid, ma'am?" asked Reid, "Didn't you leave him out here this morning?"

"No, he ran off on his own," replied the UnSub. "He poisoned me and ran off on his own."

Reid and Garcia glanced at each other. Victims poisoning UnSubs was a novel phenomenon in the field of behavioral analysis.

"Are you sure, ma'am?" asked Reid, stalling, buying time to crunch down upon the new data.

"Yes, I'm sure," replied the UnSub. "He poisoned me this morning. He mixed something into my drink. We hiked up the Blackhawk Landslide, and he was fine, but I was nauseous the whole way. By the time we got to the top, I was so busy throwing up that I didn't even notice him running off on his own. I kept seeing twenty of him, circling around me, throwing rocks at me, screaming obscenities at me!"

"LSD," Garcia mouthed at Reid. He nodded, agreeing with her assessment.

It was the UnSub's misfortune to have abducted Jared Wilson, who would just as soon as poison her as he would himself with recreational drugs of his own making. Reid and Garcia were dealing with an UnSub in the aftermath of a bad acid trip. An UnSub who would normally go down fighting might give it all up after a bad acid trip. On the other hand, an UnSub who would normally give it all up might go down fighting instead. It was yet another bifurcation.

"We believe you, ma'am, but we can't help you if you don't stop the car," Garcia said.

"You'll help me find the kid if I stop the car?" asked the UnSub. "I wasn't planning to hurt him, but he ran off all by himself."

"Of course we'll help you," Reid answered. "We'll help you find the kid from Caltech. The FBI has specialized methods for finding things in the desert."

"Yes, ma'am," Garcia agreed, "We can use geological profiling to find anything, anything at all, in the desert."

"Geological profiling?" asked the UnSub, "I don't think I've heard that term before."

"No, ma'am, you wouldn't have heard it before," Reid replied. "It's a top secret technique invented by government scientists for military purposes. It's classified."

"I see," said the UnSub. "And you know about it because you're from the FBI? The FBI will help me find the kid?"

"Yes, ma'am, we are and we will," said Reid. "If I were you, I'd stop the car and let us help you. Sooner or later, you're going to run out of gas in the desert. What are you going to do then?"

"He's right," said Garcia. "If you run out of gas, you'll be stuck out here all by yourself. Right now, we want to help you, but if you don't stop the car soon, we might change our minds."

"She's right," said Reid. "If you don't stop the car soon, we might have to leave you behind. I'm getting kind of hungry. We might have to turn around and go to In-N-Out instead."

Reid backed off on the gas pedal, letting the van lag farther and farther behind the Jeep. Weapon or no weapon, shoes or no shoes, he was going to apprehend the Campus Creeper. As long as he was chasing her across the desert, she was not abducting young men in the city. After he apprehended her, he would help her recover the body of her son from the bottom of a mine shaft. At last, they would all drive out of here together, no one would get hurt, and Reid would thank Garcia for jumping into the vortex, deadly or not, with him.

Garcia waited for the UnSub's response through the transceiver. A wave of confidence washed over her. Reid was going off on one of his ill-advised impromptu missions, but everything was going to be fine, because she was here to look after him. As long as the Princess was around, no one was going to lay a finger on her noblest Knight.

"My name is Anne," came the UnSub's response, "Anne with an 'e'."

* * *

"Anne with an 'e'" was a woman in her mid-sixties, white-haired and tan-skinned, weathered and lean, wearing a turqoise shirt, blue jeans, hiking boots, and a cowboy hat. She was the picture of health and vigor. She was what everyone wished for their own mothers at her age.

She swept her tranquilizer gun in a narrow arc between Reid and Garcia.

Garcia was confused. She didn't know if she was an abductor or an abductee.

Reid was not confused. He was here to help her, because he had promised. In helping her, he helped himself. He couldn't help it. Helpfulness was an integral part of his psychopathology.

"Jared Wilson is alive and well," Garcia informed the UnSub. "He was found at the top of the Blackhawk Landslide, where you left him this morning."

"Good, good," the UnSub murmured, tapping her tranquilizer gun against her thigh.

She steadied herself against a table covered with rock samples. She struggled to recover from her bad acid trip. Garcia hoped that she would not throw up inside the van.

"Should we radio the detectives?" Garcia asked Reid.

"Yes, radio Detective Kim," Reid replied, "Tell him that we have the UnSub."

He ripped his eyes away from the tip of the tranquilizer gun. No spots of pressure impinged upon his forehead. Tranquilizer guns were far less final than revolvers. They could even be helpful. They had clarified the mechanism of abduction, so a number of parallel universes had popped out of existence.

"You said that you'd help me find my son," said the UnSub.

Additional parallel universes popped out of existence. The remaining universes clustered closer together, like a stand of barrel cactus over the desert floor.

"We said that we'd help you find the kid from Caltech," Garcia argued.

"No!" the UnSub rebuked her. "You were the one who said that you'd help me find my son."

"Yes, ma'am," Reid soothed the UnSub. "We have several Search-and-Rescue teams in the desert this afternoon. If you tell us where your son is located, I can dispatch the teams immediately."

"Please dispatch the teams to the Amboy Caverns Mine," said the UnSub, "My son is waiting."

No additional parallel universes popped out of existence. The UnSub's words were ambiguous. In certain universes, the UnSub believed that her son was dead, but in other universes, the UnSub believed that her son was alive, trapped at the bottom of a mine shaft. Her son was like Schroedinger's Cat, living in a box with a sealed flask of hydrocyanic acid. Within the box, a quantum event would occur or not occur, causing the flask to break or not break, causing the cat to die or not die. As long as no one opened the box to observe the cat, she would be a superposition of states - dead and alive at the same time. It was a paradox of quantum mechanics, and one would be wise not to dwell upon it.

"You're going to take me there right now," the UnSub ordered the FBI.

"Why do you need us to take you there?" asked Reid, "Why can't you go there yourself?"

"I need help to get my son out of that mine shaft," said the UnSub, "And you promised to help me."

"No," Garcia mouthed at Reid.

"What if we changed our minds?" Reid asked the UnSub.

"I have enough tranquilizers to kill us all," the UnSub remarked to no one in particular.

Reid looked expectantly at Garcia. "We have no choice," he willed her to understand. The tranquilizers had taken the decision out of his hands. It was the price he paid for going off on a wild goose chase in the desert.

"Radio Detective Kim and tell him that I'll meet him at the Amboy Caverns Mine," Reid spoke to Garcia. "He'll gather up the other teams and dispatch the Cave Rescue Team. I'll drop you off at the base of the slide, back where we parked the SUV. Pierre's team will be there soon."

Garcia stared at Reid, then at the UnSub, then back at Reid again.

"Do it! Now!" Reid insisted.

Garcia complied. She would comply with everything except the last part of Reid's order. She would not be left behind, nor would she leave him behind.

Reid started the van and turned it towards the north, towards Highway 247, which would intersect Highway 62, which would intersect Adobe Road, which would intersect Amboy Road, leading him to the ghost town of Amboy, near which the UnSub's son waited, day and night, for his body to be raised out of the suffocating depths.

"His name was Walter, Walt for short," said the UnSub. "He was an astronomer. I mean, he studied astronomy in college. He wasn't old enough to be a real astronomer."

"One night during the summer, a few weeks after his freshman year, I followed him into the desert on one of his star parties. He used to come out here, alone, lugging his telescope with him, taking notes filled with declination this and right ascension that. He said that it made him feel like a real astronomer, like Galileo when he discovered the moons of Jupiter."

"I was an astronomer too," Garcia couldn't resist sharing. "I mean, I studied astronomy in college. I wasn't old enough to be a real astronomer."

"I was a geologist," said the UnSub. I looked into the ground, and he looked into the sky. We were very different."

"When he was little, Walt used to tag along with me, whenever I went out on one of my geology field trips. I didn't understand why he was so mad that I had tagged along on one of his star parties."

"We used to be so close, but we grew apart as he grew up. After he went off to college, he hardly ever called me, and he never came home on the weekends. At first, I was mad at him. Then, I was sad that he had left me behind," the UnSub explained.

The UnSub dropped her eyes into her lap. The gesture reminded Garcia of Reid's puppy dog eyes, the ones he used to trick people into thinking that he was smaller and daintier than he really was. Garcia didn't like the gesture on anyone but Reid. She decided to test the UnSub. If she could get the UnSub riled up, maybe the UnSub wouldn't let her out of the vehicle when they arrived at the base of the slide. Reid would have no choice but to let her tag along on his wild goose chase. The UnSub would take the decision out of his hands.

"Let me guess," Garcia spoke to the UnSub. "After he went off to college, your son, like any normal college kid, wanted a little taste of freedom, so he lived his own life at school and didn't pay as much attention to you as you needed. You twisted his behavior into outright abandonment, thinking that he didn't love you anymore. You spied on him and followed him around at school, until one day, you followed him out to the desert and found yourself alone with him under cover of darkness. There happened to be a mine nearby, so you pushed him down the shaft as revenge for leaving you behind."

"No!" the UnSub exclaimed, "I didn't push him!"

"Oh sorry, I have it all wrong," Garcia sneered. "You used the tranquilizer gun. Once a person gets her hands on a tranquilizer gun, how can she possibly resist using it? But it didn't go well, and the poor kid had an adverse reaction to the tranquilizers, and you dropped his body down the shaft to cover up your crime."

"No!" the UnSub insisted, "That's not what happened!"

"Maybe your son started dating. Maybe he got a girlfriend, and you were terribly jealous," Garcia continued. "Haven't you heard the saying 'If I can't have him, no one can'?"

The UnSub glared at Garcia without replying. She looked from Garcia to Reid, appealing to the nice agent to correct the mean agent. Reid remained impassive as he pulled up to the group of vehicles at the base of the slide.

"Garcia?" he gestured at Garcia to exit the van.

"No," said the UnSub, pointing her gun at Garcia. "I need to set things straight with this one."

Garcia raised her eyebrows at the UnSub, challenging the woman. She was not afraid of the tranquilizer gun. Tranquilizers lacked the finality of bullets.

Reid closed his eyes and sighed. The Princess always got whatever she wanted. He was her Knight, not her equal, so he was no match for her. He turned the van towards the east, onto a dirt road that intersected Highway 247 in a few miles. Reid drove away from the slide, and Garcia turned back to the UnSub.

"You wanted to set things straight?" Garcia asked the UnSub. "Now's your chance. You can tell your story. I'm all ears."

"As I said, I followed Walt into the desert on one of his star parties," the UnSub told her story. "He was furious that I had followed him. He got mad at me, and I got mad at him, and we argued for quite awhile. Then, he ran away from me, and I chased after him. When he ran, he didn't even take his telescope with him. It was his most valued possession, a huge Celestron reflector, so I stopped chasing him and started packing up the telescope. By the time I finished, he was long gone, and I looked for him all over the desert, until the next morning, when I discovered a trail of blood leading to a mine shaft. I think he tripped in the dark and fell down the side of an overhanging rock formation into the mine shaft. It was the mining company's fault. They should have sealed the shaft when they abandoned the mine."

"OK, so it was accident," Garcia conceded without sincerity. "Why didn't you call the authorities? Why didn't you call 911?"

"I was afraid of the authorities," the UnSub replied. "I was afraid that they would think that I had pushed my son down the mine shaft. That's what you thought as soon as you met me!"

"I thought that, because I happened to know that you had abducted and murdered eighteen people!" Garcia retorted. "Why would anyone think that back then?"

"My son had a restraining order against me," the UnSub admitted. "He had gotten it to keep me away from him at school. I couldn't believe it when he told me. I was his mother!"

Garcia threw her hands up and sputtered into the air. In the world of the UnSub, evading the authorities was more important than saving her son. Garcia hoped that the kid had not survived his fall down the deep mine shaft. She shuddered to imagine him at the bottom, trapped and injured, waiting for his mother to help him while she drove away as if nothing had ever happened.

"Why did you abduct eighteen young men?" Garcia asked the UnSub. "Were they supposed to be substitutes for you son?"

"No!" the UnSub denied the accusation. "They were supposed to help me get my son out of the mine shaft."

"How exactly were they supposed to do that?" Garcia asked. "Did they have superpowers? Were they superheroes?"

"No!" the UnSub yelled back, "Of course not! I'm not delusional. I...I wanted their help to get my son out of the mine shaft...and I thought that if we visited the mines in order..."

"OCD," Reid mumbled.

"OCD?" Garcia asked Reid.

"OCD, obsessive-compulsive disorder," Reid replied. "We never considered it. We were too busy speculating about horror movies and creepy little girls to consider OCD."

"Tell me if I have this right, ma'am," Reid addressed the UnSub. "After the accident, you developed an obsession with mines in the desert. You searched the desert, on maps and on foot, in databases and in archives, for every single mine that was similar to the Amboy Caverns Mine. You were a geologist, so it was in your nature to quibble over the geological details of the mines. You found every single mine that matched the Amboy Caverns Mine. Your developed numerological compulsions around the depths of the mines. We don't have complete data, because four of the victims were never recovered, but if we had found those bodies, we would have discovered that the mines were separated from each other by approximately the same depth. You built an ascending ramp with the mines, but you were driven by compulsions rather than delusions."

"Yes, exactly," the UnSub confirmed.

In the world of the UnSub, her son was paramount. After she lost her son, the mines became paramount. Mines were discovered, then explored, then visited with victims in tow, in a particular order according to their depths.

In a way, compulsions were far more insidious than delusions. Compulsions could not possibly be ignored. They created severe anxiety, and the only way to relieve the anxiety was to follow through with the compulsions. The UnSub had followed through eighteen times, before she was blessed with the gift of a second son, who had relieved her anxieties for eighteen years. As long as she had a son, her son was paramount. As soon as she lost a son, the mines became paramount.

"Did you really think that you'd get your son back if you ran around the desert, visiting each matching mine with one of your victims?" Garcia asked the UnSub. "Did you ditch your victims when you discovered that it didn't work?"

"If they weren't going to help me, I wasn't going to help them," the UnSub replied coldly.

"Then why the hell did you want to find Jared Wilson today?" Garcia asked angrily.

"Because he ran off all by himself," the UnSub informed her, "We hadn't gotten a chance to visit the mine yet."

Garcia's face flushed bright red. She didn't care about the UnSub's compulsions or delusions. Right now, her fingers twitched with the impulse to slap the woman in the face. She would rather be trapped with Brian Ellery for several years in a cyanide-filled control room than have to spend one more minute with the Campus Creeper in a GPS van.

"You know what I think?" Garcia snapped at the UnSub. "I think you should've jumped in after your son, after he fell down the mine shaft. The world would've been better off without you in it."

Reid turned and gave Garcia a look of warning. Tranquilizers were not as final as bullets, but they were hardly pleasant.

"What about your younger son?" Garcia asked. "He's about to head off to college, isn't he? How do you plan to get rid of him?"

"How do you know about my younger son?" asked the UnSub.

"Hmmmmmmm," Garcia pretended to think deeply. "You named him Walter, after his older brother who accidentally fell down a mine shaft. You call him Walt for short, don't you?"

"How do you know all this?" the UnSub demanded.

"I know all about you," said Garcia. "I know that your younger son is an inadequate replacement for your older son, whose skeletal remains are sitting at the bottom of the Amboy Caverns Mine. You're afraid that your younger son will abandon you, just like your older son abandoned you. It's your greatest fear. It dominates your waking hours, and it dominates your nightmares. You're not going to make the same mistake twice. You're going to get rid of your younger son before he goes off to college, before he gets a restraining order against you."

"You don't know anything about me!" the UnSub hissed at Garcia, "You don't know anything about me or my sons!"

"You want to try me?" Garcia asked.

She stared at the UnSub, who stared at Reid, appealing to the nice agent to shush the mean agent. Reid ignored them both as he drove east on Highway 62. He couldn't begin to understand the UnSub. Up to this point, her life had been full of mistakes, and she had forgiven herself for every single one of them.

Reid was content to let Garcia rip into the UnSub. At the moment, the UnSub was focused on mines and sons. Neither her compulsions or delusions included FBI agents.

In an hour, all mysteries would be solved. They would reach the Amboy Caverns Mine. It was the deepest gold mine in the Mojave Desert. It was adjacent to Amboy Caverns, a series of limestone caves and passages underground. In college, Reid had come out to the desert on a star party and stumbled upon the caverns with his friends. It had been during his senior year, when he was 16, and he remembered it all so clearly, because he had been the one who had driven his friends into the desert. They had driven out as the air cooled, camped out under the stars, and driven back as the air heated up again. They had driven out in Spender's dilapidated old Beetle, the one he had rescued from the top of the Holliston Parking Garage, after the girl had left it, and him, behind. The Beetle had been the only object that had connected the boy to the girl, and he had been loathe to let go of it, and her.

* * *

By the time Reid pulled up to the entrance of Amboy Caverns, Garcia was hopping mad. Reid sat quietly in the driver's seat, tapping his fingers against the steering wheel, waiting for backup from the numerous law enforcement personnel involved in the Campus Creeper case.

The Campus Creeper sat quiety as well, staring out the tinted windows, refusing to look at or talk to the mean agent. She focused her attentions upon the nice agent.

"The caverns were created during the Pleistocene epoch, when groundwater high in carbonic acid dissolved the limestone to carve passages through the rocks," the UnSub explained. "I used to take students out here on field trips to explore the passages. They're perfectly safe. They're a constant 65 degrees, a great place to hide out during the summer. If someone bought the land and developed the area, the caverns could become a minor tourist attraction."

"Why didn't the miners use the passages to haul out the rocks?" asked Reid. "It would've been easier than digging a deep mine shaft."

"Yes, it would've been much easier," the UnSub agreed. "But the mine was owned by a large mining company, and the bosses weren't interested in exploring the caverns. They were eager to get to the gold, so they had to do it the hard way. The only thing that separates the caverns from the veins is a thin wall of limestone. If they had done their research, they could've punched through it and built a railroad through the caverns to haul out the rocks."

"The easiest way to recover your son would be through the mine shaft," said Reid. "But I can't guarantee anything. It might be too dangerous for the Cave Rescue Team to climb through, and we're not going to risk their lives to recover..."

He stopped, not wanting to mention the dead body at the bottom of the mine shaft. He didn't want to disturb Schroedinger's Cat just yet.

"Maybe the Cave Rescue Team can punch through the limestone wall," said the UnSub.

"Maybe," said Reid. "The geologists will make an assessment when they get here. If we can get through the wall without destabilizing the caverns or the mine, going through the caverns would be safer than going through the shaft."

"Yes," the UnSub agreed. "The shaft has become more and more unstable since the mine was abandoned in the '40s. The mining company ripped out the gold and left, without even covering up the shaft."

"The geologists will check out the passages when they get here," Reid reassured the UnSub.

"Actually, we can check them out right now," the UnSub suggested. "I'm a geologist. I can make an assessment. We can save time for the Cave Rescue Team."

"How long would it take?" Reid asked.

"Half an hour to go down and an hour to come up," said the UnSub.

"No," Garcia mouthed at Reid, who gazed out the window, towards the "Eyes of the Mountain", where a pair of dark entrance portals led into the limestone passages.

"I've been here before," Reid informed Garcia. "Exploring the passages is like exploring the steam tunnels, creepy at first, but a lot of fun once you get used to it. I think there's something appealing about underground passages in general...even if they're always dark..."

"No," Garcia mouthed again.

"I could go with Anne, and you could stay here and tell the team where to find us," Reid suggested.

Garcia cringed at "Anne". "No," she said with her eyes.

"It won't take long," said the UnSub. "We won't have to waste any time when the Cave Rescue Team gets here. We can give them an assessment right away. Otherwise, we'll have to wait until tomorrow to explore the area. We'll have to stay in Twentynine Palms overnight."

"Yes, we will," Garcia thought. "And you'll be staying at the County Jail. And you won't be coming with us tomorrow."

"Anne's right," Reid said. "We can do the exploratory work right now, and the team can proceed directly to the recovery."

"Reid," Garcia warned him.

She couldn't believe her ears. Reid was entertaining the UnSub's suggestion. The UnSub was manipulating him, and Reid was responding to her manipulation. His pathological helpfulness had reared its ugly head yet again. One day, it would kill him, but not as long as she was around.

"Who exactly is he trying to help?" Garcia wondered. "The UnSub? The UnSub's son? Himself? His mother? His father?"

Garcia did not have time to untangle the web of Reid's psyche. It was a superposition of all possible states, and one would be wise not to dwell upon it.

"You wait here," Reid said to Garcia, "I'll go explore the caverns with Anne."

The UnSub smirked at Garcia, who bit back another urge to slap the woman in the face. Garcia had her principles, but she could make exceptions too.

The UnSub stood up to exit the van, slightly hunched over as she reached for the door handle, slightly distracted as she flipped the lock. She was eager to enter the caverns. At last, she had found someone who was willing to help her. With him around, she could dump her compulsions and jump to the end of the mine trail. His presence soothed her anxieties. Sons were superior to mines.

Garcia saw her chance and took it. She snatched the tranquilizer gun out of the UnSub's momentarily loose grasp. She pointed it at the UnSub, then swept it in a narrow arc between Reid and the UnSub.

"You win, Princess," the Knight smiled at the Princess.

"I always do, Knight," the Princess smiled at the Knight.

"Checkmate," they informed the Campus Creeper.

Isaac Asimov once said, "In life, unlike in chess, the game continues after checkmate." What he had neglected to mention was that the game could take place in any number of parallel universes, and in some of those universes, there was no such thing as checkmate.

* * *

Nerd speak clarifications

1) Schroedinger's Cat

The cat lives in the box with a radioactive substance that may or may not decay. If an atom decays, a Geiger counter detects it and triggers a hammer to shatter the flask of hydrocyanic acid which produces...you guessed it...cyanide gas. Then, the cat dies. One interpretation of quantum mechanics says that the cat won't be absolutely dead or alive until it is observed. Before it is observed, it exists as a combination (superposition) of dead and alive states. The act of measurement "picks" one of the states and that state is and always has been the real state. This is different from the "many worlds" interpretation, which says that both states are real and exist in different parallel universes that cannot interact with each other.

2) Amboy Caverns

Do not exist, but based on Mitchell Caverns in the Mojave Desert.

3) Anne with an "e"

I couldn't help naming the UnSub Anne, after Anne of Green Gables. In that story, Anne and Diana were best friends all their lives. Anne had three sons, one of whom was named Walter, who was shy and sensitive and read poetry and was a "sissy", but when it came time to fight in WWI, he was always the bravest man on the field. I thought Walter was the most Reid-like of Anne's sons.


	23. Chapter 23

Disclaimer 1: I do not own Criminal Minds.

Disclaimer 2: I do not own Caltech, although I did go to college there. All characters are fictional, regardless of how much they may resemble actual persons.

Author's Note: The format of this story is unusual. It alternates between 1994-1995 and 2010. I hope the weird format doesn't bother people too much, since I've already got a bunch of chapters written and plan to update regularly. I just need to proofread the chapters before I add them to the story.

Some of the chapters contain quite a bit of nerd speak, but I reserve the right to nerd speak as much as I want in a story about my favorite TV nerds. Nerd speak clarifications may be found at the end of each chapter.

This is my first ever fanfiction. Reading &/ Reviewing are much appreciated. Enjoy!

* * *

Chapter 23

July 1995

"Yummy!" Princess Grendelin sniffed the air.

"Yummy!" Sir Rubik sniffed the cookies.

The giant cookies came out of the oven, soft and golden brown in their personal baking pans. Princess Grendelin pried open a huge carton of vanilla ice cream. Sir Rubik exhaled onto the freezer door, spreading circles of condensation all over its glass surface. He had time to write the Schroedinger Equation into the condensation before Princess Grendelin interrupted him.

"Rubik!" the Princess yelled, "Help me! I can't get the ice cream out of the carton! It's superfrozen!"

Sir Rubik exhaled one last puff of breath onto the freezer door before he joined the Princess at the kitchen counter. The Coffeehouse was closed for the summer, which meant that now was the perfect time for the Princess and the Knight to make it their very own.

Sir Rubik peered into the carton. The oversized hunk of ice cream within was indeed superfrozen. It clinked at him when he tapped it with a fork. He shook his fist at it and stuck it into the 400-degree oven.

Five minutes later, giant cookies were topped with giant scoops of ice cream to create Calzookies, the sugar-saturated specialty of the Coffeehouse. Princess Grendelin was about to dig in when Sir Rubik put up his hand to stop her. She watched in amazement as he poured out two cups of coffee, dumping several packets of sugar into his own cup and presenting her with her cup and several packets of sugar that she could use at her own discretion.

"I thought you hated coffee," the Princess remarked.

"I did, until I discovered that coffee has certain special properties," Sir Rubik explained. "These properties are amplified by a large concomitantly administered dose of sugar."

"And what are these properties?" the Princess asked, even though she already knew the answer.

"The property of making a person stay up for eight days!" Sir Rubik gloated. He yawned into his cup, then remembered that the cup was full of coffee. He sipped at his coffee.

"Come again?" the Princess couldn't believe her ears. "You haven't really been staying up for eight days, have you?"

"I have!" Sir Rubik replied, "Can't you tell from my dark under-eye circles?"

Princess Grendelin took off her glasses and squinted closely into Sir Rubik's face.

"No, they look the same as always," she diagnosed his condition. "You always look like you've been staying up for two or three days. But eight days? Isn't that a bit excessive? Why would you do something like that?"

"I made a bet with one of the grad students in lab," Sir Rubik explained. "He claimed that no human being could stay up for a week without dropping dead, so I challenged him to a bet."

"That's not fair, Rube! How dare you pick on a poor little grad student? He doesn't know that you're not human," the Princess chastised the Knight.

"I dare, because I can!" the Knight gloated again.

"If this is your eighth day, then you've won the bet and then some," the Princess realized.

"Yes," Sir Rubik agreed, "I may never sleep again. I find that sleeplessness gives me a nice little high. It's strangely pleasant, like getting zapped in the finger with household electricity."

"When did you get zapped?" asked the Princess.

"This morning, while I was changing a lightbulb," Sir Rubik replied. "It gave me a nice little jolt, all the way to the heart muscle. I guess I should've taken a more existentialist approach to the problem."

"You mean sit on your ass and wait for the lightbulb to change itself?" asked the Princess.

"Hmmmmmmm," the Knight commented existentially.

"So you've been medicating yourself with coffee for eight days?" the Princess asked.

"Yeah, I can't believe that I used to hate coffee," Sir Rubik rolled his eyes at his own stupidity. "I used to think that coffee was gross. I didn't realize that it was so delicious until I needed it to win a bet. I'm addicted to it now," he smiled in a lopsided indoctrinated manner.

"And what do you get for winning the bet?" asked the Princess.

"The grad student, Matt, has to be my slave in lab for the entire summer," Sir Rubik gloated further. "He has to do all the menial little jobs that I'm too lazy to do, like weigh out 5 mg of reagent or hammer out dry ice or dispense liquid nitrogen or wash glassware or wipe up spills or get coffee for me from the Red Door Cafe. They have a new drink, the Brain Freeze, that combines the best of coffee and sugar. It's a superposition of all delicious states," he snorted.

"Wow, I wouldn't want to be that poor grad student this summer," Princess Grendelin shuddered. "I already feel sorry for this poor Matt, having to be bossed around by a 13-year-old all day."

"Don't worry about it, Princess," Sir Rubik comforted the soft-hearted Princess. "Grad students are born minions. They're masochists. They enjoy this kind of torture. They wouldn't know what to do with themselves if there were no one around to torture them."

"You do realize that you're going to become a grad student one day?" the Princess reminded the Knight.

"Of course," Sir Rubik affirmed. "But I'm never going to become anyone's obedient little minion. I have megalomanical tendencies. I'm going to be a minion master, not a minion. Or a puppet master, not a puppet."

"Are you going to torture your minions, minion master?" asked the Princess.

"Of course," the minion master replied. "I'd be neglecting my duties as minion master if I failed to torture my minions. Starting with my first official minion...Go clean up this mess!" the minion master ordered.

"Dear Sir!" the Princess exclaimed, her eyes wide with shock. "How dare you order the Princess to perform such unbecoming tasks? The Princess is not your Laboratory Page!"

"I tire of serving the Princess!" the Knight declared boldly. "From this moment forward, I serve myself alone! I shall unite all the domains, near and far, and anoint myself King of All That Is, Was, or Ever Shall Be!"

The Princess gasped at the audacity of the evil King. She swore to defend her domain against him, even unto the grave.

"Never!" the Princess proclaimed. "Not as long as breath remains in the Princess!"

"My apologies, Princess," King Rubik mocked the Princess. "Your silly little threats are no match for my marauding armies!"

"You have no armies!" the Princess argued. "No one would serve you!"

"Alas, Princess," he mocked her again, "That's where you're wrong. I have synthesized mind control drugs that have converted all the grad students of Caltech into my obedient little minions! They serve me and me alone! They love their King!"

"Oh no, not the grad students!" the Princess panicked, pacing up and down the kitchen floor. "Whatever shall I do?" she mumbled to herself. "The grad students shall ransack my verdant domain and extract its riches for their evil purposes!"

"If you can't beat them, join them," the evil King suggested.

"Join them?" the Princess considered. "I'm a Princess of the Light! I cannot fall to the Shadow! What of my domain?"

"One day, sooner or later, I shall hold stewardship over you domain," the evil King replied. "If you join me, dear Princess, we shall hold stewardship over our mutual domain. Together! Otherwise, you shall be cast out of the land..."

The Princess hesitated, frowning and wringing her hands together. A part of her wished to join the evil King, but another part of her wished to destroy the insidious creature.

"I shall be King, and you shall be Queen, and we shall rule over our mutual domain," the evil King enticed the wavering Princess.

"I shall be Queen?" the Princess asked, her will power sliding down the slippery slope to the Shadow.

"Indeed, my Queen," the evil King beckoned. "We shall be equals, and we shall rule over all the minions in the land, above and below the horizon, above and below the ground, out into the infinitudes of the bubble universes."

The evil King waited, baring his fangs, as he watched the Princess morph into the evil Queen. For each virtue that she shed, she replaced it with a vice.

"It is settled, my King," the evil Queen smiled coquettishly. "I shall accept your offer," she converted to the Shadow.

"You shall not regret it, my Queen," said the evil King. "Now, go clean up this mess..." he put his feet up on the kitchen counter.

The Princess pursed her lips unhappily, offended that her noblest Knight had ordered her about. Then, she remembered that she had become an evil Queen, who was but the equal of an evil King.

"Fine," sniffed the Queen. "But since we are equals over our domain, you, my King, shall clean up the mess the next time we create one."

"I shall push her down a pit before that times arrives, yes, yes, I shall..." the evil King murmured under his breath, tapping his fingers against his lips and bulging his eyes out of their sockets.

He looked like a deranged chipmunk, and the Queen couldn't help laughing at the antics of the King. She turned towards the sink, wishing that Matt the Laboratory Page were here to help her. The King paid no heed, walking over to the freezer and reinstating the Schroedinger Equation to its rightful place upon the cold glass surface.

Here, in the Coffeehouse, on a quiet Sunday morning in July, the girl and the boy could be the Princess and the Knight, or the boy and the girl could be the King and the Queen, all to their hearts' desire. Official uniforms and terrifying flashlights and glistening metal handcuffs would not spoil their fun for hours to come. Peace reigned over their domain, like the quiet before the storm.

* * *

Penelope laid the Princess to rest upon a bed of orange California poppies.

Before she fell asleep, the Princess reflected upon the beautiful things in her domain. As with all beautiful things, there was a beginning and an end. Hers had come, and she passed gently into slumber. She did not dream of the Knight as she slept, for he would be there, waiting for her, when she awakened.

Penelope thought of the boy as the black SUV drove down California Boulevard towards the 110 Freeway. She scanned through the images and reels in her brain, collecting the ones with him in them. She gathered up the images and reels and compressed them into an infinitesimally small, brilliantly shining orb. She plucked stray images and reels off the floor and dangled them in the vicinity of the orb. The orb sucked up the images and reels, crunching down upon them until they were assimilated. The orb shrank in volume as it grew in mass, and its light faded away. At the Chandrasekhar limit, the last point of light disappeared into the void, leaving behind nothing but blackness and a scar in spacetime.

Penelope was an astronomer, logical and rational, but even she believed that one day, under the right set of conditions, light would escape a black hole.

* * *

"Meow!" a small orange-and-white kitten meowed at King Rubik.

"Meow a little louder, Ani," the King implored. "The Queen will be totally freaked out when she hears you!"

"Meow!" the cat meowed louder.

She stared reproachfully at her master from her basket. He stared apologetically back at her as he lowered the basket into The Pit. King Rubik wondered why Queen Grendelin had dismantled both her pulley system and her security regime in the course of a single day.

"I bet she's got something newer and cooler to play with," he thought to himself. "The Princess...I mean, the Queen...has always got something up her sleeve."

"Meow!" the cat admonished her master with her large yellow eyes, their pupils dilating in the darkness of the ladder shaft.

"It'll only take a few minutes, Ani," said the King. "I'm trying to lower you as slowly as I can. The Queen will meet you on the other end."

"Meow!" the cat meowed mournfully.

"Hey, Queen Grendelin, Your Majesty," the King yelled down The Pit.

"Yes, my belovedest King?" he thought he heard her yell up The Pit.

"What was that, my Queen? I couldn't hear you over the meowing!" he yelled again.

"Maybe she's taking a nap," he thought. "Coffee doesn't work for everyone. It makes some people sleepy rather than wakey..."

"Meow!" the cat wailed from the bottom of the ladder shaft.

"Hey, Your Majesty," the King yelled down The Pit. "Have you noticed anything new in our mutual domain? A new denizen, perhaps? We'll have to bestow new names and occupations upon our honored guests! Her temporary name is Anonymous, Ani for short!"

King Rubik frowned. He was not used to being ignored by the Queen. He recalled images and reels from his eidetic memory, replaying the events of the day before his eyes.

At 8:30 AM, the Knight met the Princess for breakfast at the Coffeehouse. The Knight would not normally be awake at such an hour, but he was now accustomed to being awake at every hour of everyday. The Princess and the Knight dined upon Calzookies in the kitchen, while the Knight told the saga of his eight waking days and his new love affair with coffee. The tale drove the Knight into an episode of megalomaniacal fervor, and he invaded the Princess's domain and proclaimed himself King of All That Is, Was, or Ever Shall Be. The evil King enticed the Princess with visions of grandeur. The evil King threatened the Princess with visions of ruin. The armies of marauding grad students did their work upon the Princess's fragile psyche. Eventually, the Princess succumbed to the Shadow and proclaimed herself Queen of All That Is, Was, or Ever Shall Be. The evil King forced the evil Queen clean up their mutual mess in the kitchen, all without the help of a Laboratory Page. Then, they bid farewell in the cool interior of the SAC. The evil Queen entered the portal to the steam tunnels back to Arms, and the evil King entered the portal to the stairs back to Ricketts House.

In Ricketts House, the evil King became the good King, when he was blessed with the gift of the Cat. One of the seniors from Crud Alley dumped the warm writhing mass of fur into his lap as he watched cartoons in the lounge.

"Take care of her," the senior intoned mystically, "One day, you shall be rewarded."

The good King gaped at the senior, then at the cat, then back at the senior again. The senior walked away and drove off towards the east, in an old Hippiemobile, with all the windows foiled over and all the walls painted black.

King Rubik awakened from his sleep-deprived trance and stepped into the ladder shaft, examining Queen Grendelin's behaviors and expressions as he climbed down the ladder.

"Why isn't she answering?" he wondered. "Is she mad at me? She's never been mad at me before. Why would she be mad at me today?"

"Maybe she really didn't want to clean up the mess," he thought. "I shouldn't have insisted on it, but I was only joking around. We were only playing around, like we always do."

"Or maybe she's mad, because I changed the story," he thought. "I changed the story on my own, without running it by her. She doesn't want us to be the King and the Queen. She wants us to be the Princess and the Knight."

"Kings and queens, if they shared a mutual domain, would be married to each other," he reasoned. "Maybe the Queen...the Princess...was offended over the King's...the Knight's...presumptuousness."

In a flash of shining armor, the Knight shed the crown of the King. He grasped the mighty sword of the Knight, happy to serve the Princess in a domain that was hers and hers alone.

"Meow!" the cat whimpered at Sir Rubik's feet.

Sir Rubik hopped off the ladder and knocked on the door separating the ladder shaft from the first floor. The cat continued meowing, so the Knight lifted her into his arms and held her face up, waiting for the Princess to swing the door open and gasp out her surprise.

"Princess!" he knocked loudly.

"Maybe she went out for the day," the Knight explained to the Cat. "Maybe she went grocery shopping. Maybe she went driving to charge the car battery."

"Purrrrrrr," the Cat replied.

"We can wait for her inside," the Knight winked at the Cat. "We can give her a little scare when she gets back."

Sir Rubik purred at Ani, turned the doorknob, and swung the door open. He stood staring at the sight that greeted him, ignoring the mass of fur that twisted and turned in his arms in its attempt to wiggle free.

Ten minutes later, he stepped out of the ladder shaft, into the first floor of The Pit. Thirty minutes later, after searching the walls and floors and ceilings and railings, he climbed up the ladder into the sub-sub-basement of Arms Laboratory. Three minutes later, he grabbed the basket out of the ladder shaft. One minute later, he fled, gasping for air, up the stairwell and out the door, into the sun-lit world above.

Spencer laid the Knight to rest upon a bed of pebbles in Millikan Pond.

Before he fell asleep, the Knight reflected upon the Princess. As with all beautiful things, she was not real. She popped out of existence, and he passed gently into slumber. He did not dream of the Princess as he slept, for she would be there, waiting for him, when he awakened.

Spencer thought of the girl as he rode his bike back to Ricketts House, with Ani purring in her basket attached to his handlebars. He scanned through the images and reels in his brain, collecting the ones with her in them. He dismantled each image and reel individually, scattering the fragments onto the floor. He gathered up the fragments and rearranged them, until they assumed a different structure, their former brilliance replaced by dullness, their former clarity replaced by obscurity. He moved the fragments to the sub-sub-basement of his mind, where there lived a four-story pit that he had vacated for them. Cubbyholes stood empty in their aisles, eager to accept the gift of new knowledge. Over time, they would be filled and they would forget, as their master would forget, all that they had formerly contained.

Spencer was a chemist, logical and rational, but even he believed that one day, under the right set of conditions, graphite would turn into diamond.

* * *

The cat Anonymous, Ani for short, snuggled up against her master as he slept in his bed. The July night was warm, but the cat desired a different kind of warmth. She burrowed into the nook between his chin and collarbone. She brushed her white whiskers against his skin. She yawned and licked her chops. Finally, she settled into a leisurely nap.

In the cat's dream, she watched her master change before her large yellow eyes. She shrank as he grew, until he gazed down at her from a great height. His face lost the roundness of childhood and found the angles of manhood. His fur lengthened and shortened, lengthened and shortened, over and over again. His eyes remained the same.

The cat was not proficient in mathematics, but she had her instinct. She did not know how many years she would live in his care, but she did know that her master would not be well and whole and himself for the entire span of her life on Earth.

Nevertheless, she was content. She gave only the sweetest purest thing on Earth and in Heaven - the love of a feline, that had to be earned, but when given, was forever and true.

* * *

Nerd speak clarifications

1) Schroedinger Equation

Totally different from Schroedinger's Cat. The equation describes the physical state of a system, such as an atom or molecule, in quantum mechanics.

2) Black Hole/Chrandrasekhar Limit

A black hole is a very very very large mass occupying a region of space from which light cannot escape the gravitational pull of the mass. The Chrandrasekhar limit is an upper boundary for the mass of a certain type of star. If the mass gets too large, the star will collapse uncontrollably until it becomes a black hole.

3) Graphite/Diamond

Graphite and diamond have the same chemical composition but extremely different properties due to their extremely different structures. Both are made of pure carbon. Graphite is dull and soft, diamond is brilliant and hard. If left to themselves, a sample of diamond will degrade extremely slowly into a sample of graphite, but never the other way around.


	24. Chapter 24

Disclaimer 1: I do not own Criminal Minds.

Disclaimer 2: I do not own Caltech, although I did go to college there. All characters are fictional, regardless of how much they may resemble actual persons.

Author's Note: The format of this story is unusual. It alternates between 1994-1995 and 2010. I hope the weird format doesn't bother people too much, since I've already got a bunch of chapters written and plan to update regularly. I just need to proofread the chapters before I add them to the story.

Some of the chapters contain quite a bit of nerd speak, but I reserve the right to nerd speak as much as I want in a story about my favorite TV nerds. Nerd speak clarifications may be found at the end of each chapter.

This is my first ever fanfiction. Reading &/ Reviewing are much appreciated. Enjoy!

* * *

Chapter 24

July 2010

In a parallel universe, Garcia swept the tranquilizer gun in a narrow arc between Reid and the UnSub.

"What are you doing?" Reid asked.

"I'm not letting you go down there," Garcia replied.

"Put that away, Garcia," he ordered her.

"No, Reid, I'm not putting this away," she repelled him.

"Garcia!" Reid stared wide-eyed.

"We shouldn't be out here in the first place," Garcia said calmly. "It was a poor decision to drive out here. With her," she tilted her head at the UnSub.

"Yes, I agree that it was a poor decision," Reid said just as calmly. "Back when I made this poor decision, she had been the one holding the gun," he gestured towards the UnSub. "If you had been the one holding the gun, I would've made a different decision."

He dropped his eyes from Garcia's face to her hands, where the gun was no longer sweeping out a narrow arc between him and the UnSub. It was now pointed squarely at him.

"That was my second poor decision of the day," Reid continued. "My first poor decision was chasing down an UnSub in the desert, with 0.0 pairs of weapons and 0.5 pairs of shoes between us. I shouldn't have done it. I should've waited for backup, so she could've gotten away. That was all my fault too."

"No, that wasn't all your fault," Garcia argued. "That was my fault too. I wanted to chase her down too. Once I spotted her Jeep, I couldn't bear to let her drive away. I was afraid that we'd never find her again. I wanted to solve the problem right then and there."

"Exactly," Reid agreed, "I saw a chance and took it."

"We saw a chance and took it," Garcia corrected him.

"You should've gotten off at the base of the slide," Reid said. "You tricked her, and me, into letting you tag along. I was trying to keep you safe, Garcia."

"And I'm trying to keep you safe now, Reid," Garcia replied. "No one is going anywhere. We're all going to sit here and wait for the authorities to show up."

"The authorities are here," said Reid. "We're the authorities! You're the authority with the gun!"

"I'm not an authority," Garcia retorted. "But I'm not letting you out of my sight."

"Oh really, Garcia?" Reid asked angrily, "You're not letting me out of your sight? Since when was it your job to order me around? Did Hotch hire you to babysit me?"

"No!" Garcia replied angrily.

"Oh wait, let me guess," Reid pretended to think deeply. "I know! It was Morgan who hired you to babysit me!"

"No one hired me to babysit you," Garcia replied calmly. "I'm doing this, because right now, I'm being rational, and you're not. You said it yourself, 'Most people spend most of their time being irrational.'"

"Even me?" Reid asked.

"Especially you," Garcia replied.

"I wish you'd stop pointing that thing at me," Reid eyed the tranquilizer gun.

"I'm sorry," Garcia replied. "I'll stop pointing this thing at you, if you promise me that you're not going anywhere."

"I'm not going anywhere," Reid promised. "I was only entertaining a suggestion. I was only performing a thought experiment on the best method of entering the mine. I was only thinking a few steps ahead, like Gideon would tell me to do, like Hotch would tell me not to do."

"You promise?" Garcia asked.

"Cross my heart and hope to die. Stick a needle in my eye," Reid recited robotically. "I just learned this last week, while waiting for the bus in front of an elementary school..."

Garcia lowered the gun, but gripped it tightly in her right hand as she pointed its tip at the floor. The UnSub sat quietly, watching a psychodrama in which she was only an understudy. She was surprised that Garcia was not pointing the gun at her.

"You can't help everyone," Garcia said to Reid. "You shouldn't try to help everyone. You shouldn't try to solve every problem. For some problems, there are no solutions," she glanced sideways at the UnSub.

"I know," Reid agreed half-heartedly. "For some problems, there are no solutions. But how do we know that there's no solution unless we try to solve the problem? For every problem, there may or may not be a solution, but I have to try to find it. I can't let it go."

"Why? Because you're a genius?" Garcia asked pointedly. "Because you're better than everyone else? Because if you can't find the solution, then there's no hope for the rest of us?"

"No!" Reid replied sharply, "That's not what I meant!"

"It is, Reid, whether you admit it or not," Garcia retorted. "You're a genius, not a run-of-the-mill 140-IQ genius, but a one-in-a-billion 187-IQ super-genius! Whatever someone else can do, you can do it faster and better. You work as part of a team, but sometimes, you wish that you could be left alone to solve the cases by yourself! Case in point!" she waved her hand, the one not holding the tranquilizer gun, over the walls of the van.

"I don't think that I'm better than anyone else," Reid muttered sullenly.

"I do," Garcia replied. "I think that you're better than almost everyone on this Godforsaken planet, but that doesn't mean that I expect you to solve all the world's problems on your own. You're the smartest kid in the room, but you don't have to be the only kid in the room."

"I'm used to being alone," Reid said quietly, "It's in my nature to be alone."

"No, it's not," Garcia rejected him. "You didn't used to feel this way, not when I knew you at Tech."

"That was a very long time ago, Garcia," Reid replied, "I was 13!"

"You were 13, and you were yourself," Garcia explained. "What happened, Reid? Since January, I've been replaying everything that's happened in the time that we've been working together. Sometimes, I think that you're exactly the same person, but other times, I think that you're a whole other person. You didn't used to be quite so isolated. You didn't used to be so isolated when you were at Tech, when we were at Tech together."

"Nothing happened," Reid mumbled stubbornly. "I grew up. People grow up. People change as they grow up. That's all there is to it."

"No, I don't think so," Garcia replied. "I think..." she trailed off, hesitating to articulate her conjectures about her friend.

"I think that you changed after you committed your mother to a mental institution," Garcia let it out.

Reid glared at her, saying nothing, refusing to reject her conjectures, his silence confirming the truth of her statements. As much as he berated himself for psychoanalyzing his friends, he found it somewhat pleasant when they turned around and psychoanalyzed him. It made him feel important. He wondered if he had some kind of narcissistic personality disorder, then remembered that a person with narcissistic personality disorder would never wonder whether he had narcissistic personality disorder. It was the truth that appealed to him, as truth always appealed to a scientist. In the world of quantum mechanics, truth could be ambivalent, but in the world of humans, truth could be absolute, as long as someone cared enough to dig it up and speak it out.

"You feel guilty about it," Garcia articulated further. "You feel guilty about everything that's ever gone wrong in your life. You've twisted everything that was someone else's fault or no one's fault at all into something that was your fault. It was your fault that your father left your family, because you were too smart and too odd for him to handle. It was your fault that your mother got worse and worse as she got older, because you weren't around to take care of her while you were at Tech."

"I did try to take care of her," Reid revealed. "She lived with me for a year at Tech. She lived with me in the grad student apartments during my first year of grad school, when I was 17. I committed her after I turned 18, in the fall of my second year. I committed her at my earliest opportunity. Then, I did my dissertation for my first Ph.D. It was in chemistry. Then, I got two more Ph.D.s, in math and engineering. Then, I met Gideon and stopped getting Ph.D.s."

"I didn't know that," Garcia mumbled.

"I could only take care of her for a year," Reid said. "I thought that I could take care of her forever, but I could only handle it for a year. She had gotten worse by then. It wasn't like when I was little. She had more frequent episodes, more bizarre delusions. One time, she followed me to lab in the middle of the night and almost blew up the entire building. Another time, I went out with a group of friends from lab, and she wandered after us, barefoot, and almost got run over by a car."

"You did the right thing, Reid," Garcia reassured Reid. "You weren't supposed to take care of her forever. You were right to leave her to the professionals. They can help her better than you can."

"Well, you weren't around to see the look on her face when the professionals came to pick her up," Reid replied. "I stayed home for a month, in Las Vegas, to write up my chemistry thesis, and that's when I made the decision to commit her. I made it suddenly, one night, while waiting for my software to finish analyzing my data. Once the idea entered my mind, I couldn't let go of it. I was so eager to do it. I contacted the institution the next day. I made an appointment for them to pick her up. They came two days later. I ripped her off like an old used band-aid."

"I'm sorry, Reid," Garcia whispered.

"After that, I threw myself into my work," Reid explained. "I started my math project right after my chemistry project ended. Actually, I picked up my math project from where I left off in college. That's why it only took me a year to finish my second Ph.D. Then, I picked up an engineering project for a third Ph.D. I was planning to get a Ph.D. in physics, but thankfully, I met Gideon before I could get sucked into another project. All the professors wanted me on their projects. All the departments wanted me to join them as a professor. I postponed the decision for as long as I could. I postponed the decision until it was taken out of my hands."

"Thankfully, you met Gideon," Garcia remarked.

"Or I wouldn't have joined the BAU?" Reid asked.

"Or you wouldn't have found another family," Garcia answered. "You wouldn't have found me," she gave a tiny smile.

"And I would've been alone forever," Reid summarized. "But it's not right, despite the fact that it feels right. I've been out living my life for ten years, and my mother has been trapped at a mental institution. She's going to be trapped there for the rest of her life."

"You don't know that," said Garcia.

"Oh right, I don't know that," Reid realized. "One day, I might end up there with her!" he twirled his index finger against his temple in the universal sign of insanity.

"Yes, at this rate, you might," Garcia agreed. "But I'll let you in on something that you might not have realized otherwise. You won't be going there alone. If you ever go crazy, which is highly likely, you'll have driven me crazy first, so we'll have to go to the loony bin together."

Reid snorted and rolled his eyes. Then, he realized the benefits of such a scenario. He bought into her delusion without a second thought.

"Would you really go to the loony bin with me?" he tested her.

"Didn't we already spend nine months in a loony bin together?" she reminded him.

"Oh yeah, I guess we did. After you escaped the loony bin, I spent another seven years there! But this time, maybe we can run our very own loony bin?" Reid suggested.

"Now you're thinking!" Garcia praised Reid. "I knew it was only a matter of time before you returned to your rational self."

"Can I bring Dr. Mallory?" Reid asked.

"Who's that?" Garcia asked.

"My imaginary puppy dog," Reid explained. "I named him after Quinn Mallory from 'Sliders'."

"What a coincidence!" Garcia exclaimed. "I have an imaginary kitty cat named Professor Arturo, also from 'Sliders'!"

"You know, Reid, Quinn Mallory isn't really a Doctor," Garcia corrected Reid. "He never got his Ph.D. He was too busy sliding between parallel universes to do his dissertation."

"I know, I know," Reid replied. "But I think he deserves an honorary Ph.D. for the invention of sliding."

"Yeah, I guess," Garcia conceded. "We should've started nerd speaking earlier," she remarked. "There's something relaxing about nerd speak, don't you think? Especially after a long day of gruesome images..."

"Of course I think so, I'm me," Reid remarked. "I don't think that Morgan will ever understand the appeal of nerd speak though, but Prentiss is a potential assimilant..."

"Prentiss is more than halfway there already," Garcia assessed the situation. "I could probably assimilate Rossi. JJ might be a difficult case, but if we assimilate Will, she might follow his lead."

"Hotch?" Reid asked.

"Hmmmmmmm," Garcia considered. "Our Magnificent Overlord is an inscrutable entity. He could go either way."

"We could assimilate Jack," Reid suggested. "We could offer to babysit him sometimes. We could turn him into a Techer."

"Good thinking, Gorgeous Gray Matter!" Garcia exclaimed. "I knew your genius wouldn't be totally useless! If we assimilate Jack, then Hotch will have no choice but to follow!"

"We could do the same for Henry," Reid plotted. "Otherwise, we'd be neglecting our duty as godparents."

"You're right, you're right!" Garcia plotted with Reid. "I don't want to be brought up against the Fairy Godparents Board for dereliction of duty! I'm a good Fairy Godmother!"

"And I'm a good Fairy Godfather?" Reid tested the unfamiliar words.

At this, Garcia laughed out loud, and Reid laughed out loud with her. The UnSub shifted her eyes back and forth between the two of them, their unexpected mirth contrasting sharply with her inescapable quagmire. She wished that she were one of them. She wished that she were anyone but herself, a serial kidnapper and murderer, caught after 26 years, forced to take responsibility for her crimes at last. She wished that she were stark raving mad, so that no one, especially not her living son, could blame her for her actions.

In the same breath, she took responsibility. She retraced her crimes in her mind, plucking away each crime like the ripe fruit of a tree. As soon as she detached a fruit from its branch, she would hold it under the branch to re-attach it, and lo and behold, it would attach itself seamlessly to the tree. In the years to come, she would do this over and over and over again. It would become her new compulsion, and one day, when she no longer needed to follow through, she would find herself crystallized anew.

Reid did not look at the UnSub as she detached and attached her fruits. He looked at Garcia. As long as he looked at her, he could be himself. The Knight would not lose himself, as long as the Princess was there to keep it for him.

"Jared Wilson is fine, and that's all that matters today," Reid declared.

"That's all that matters today," Garcia agreed.

The UnSub perked up at the mention of Jared Wilson. Her instinct took hold of her limbs. That sneaky little bastard from Caltech was fine, but her son was not fine. Her son was waiting for her, and she needed to get him out of that mine shaft before he spent another night alone in the darkness.

The UnSub barged out the door as Detective Martinez and Detective Raymond pulled up in a black SUV. She raced across the desert scrub, running towards the "Eyes of the Mountain".

"Stop!" the detectives yelled.

"Stop or I shoot!" Detective Martinez yelled.

Reid jerked open the driver's side door, leaped out of the van, and ran after the UnSub, hardly gimpy at all in his eagerness to follow. His instinct took hold of his limbs. Now that he had apprehended the Campus Creeper, he was not about to let her out of his sight. Now that he had saved the UnSub, he was not about to let anyone kill her.

"Reid!" Garcia screamed after him. "Don't shoot!" she screamed at the detectives.

The scene swirled dizzily around her. It conjured up the sight of another scene that she had not witnessed for herself. Prentiss had been the one who had described it to her. On a deserted street in a small town in Texas, Reid had confronted a boy with a machine gun aimed at his front, while the BAU and the police force had aimed their handguns at his back. Everyone had been shocked that he had done such a thing. Garcia had not understood it at the time, but she understood it now. Her understanding took hold of her limbs.

The UnSub was out of range of the tranquilizer gun. Detective Martinez would not let anyone shoot Detective Raymond without shooting back at the shooter. Detective Raymond would not let anyone shoot Detective Martinez without shooting back at the shooter. Reid was the only one who would let anyone shoot him, as long as no one else had to be shot in front of him.

Garcia aimed her tranquilizer gun at Reid, and before he could enter the detectives' line of fire, she squeezed the trigger and launched a tranquilizer dart squarely into the back of his leg. As long as the Princess was around, no one, except the Princess, was going to lay a finger on her noblest Knight. Finally, in the desert and under the sun, Reid was no longer alone.

* * *

Schroedinger's Cat peeked out of its box, alive and well. All the parallel universes popped out of existence, leaving behind the one that was observed.

"I can't believe you tranked me," Reid said to Garcia.

"Meep," Garcia replied.

"Did you enjoy it as much as I think you did?" Reid asked Garcia.

"Blurg," Garcia replied.

"Someone once said, 'Once a person gets her hands on a tranquilizer gun, how can she possibly resist using it?'" Reid quoted Garcia.

"Erm," Garcia replied.

"Thank you, Princess," Reid thanked Garcia.

"You're welcome, Knight," Garcia recovered the power of speech.

"Where's the UnSub?" Reid asked.

"On her way back to LA," Garcia replied. "Detective Raymond chased her down before she could enter the caverns. She's going to get a psychological evaluation before they interrogate her. She's going to get a chance."

"And her son?" Reid asked.

"Dead at the bottom of the mine shaft," Garcia replied. "The Cave Rescue Team lowered a camera down the shaft. They spotted his body. They'll have to stabilize the shaft before they can recover the body, but that should only take a couple of days."

"And Jared Wilson?" Reid asked.

"Alive and well," Garcia replied. "He's with the geology students in another van."

"And my shoes?" Reid asked.

"They fit Jared perfectly," Garcia replied. "Apparently, you're not the only one with clown feet. You'll have to buy new shoes. Jared's keeping yours as a lucky talisman."

"And my gun?" Reid asked.

"Pierre's got it," Garcia replied. "Apparently, he enjoys playing with a gun that was once pointed at his forehead. You'll have to get a new gun. Pierre's keeping yours as a lucky talisman."

"And your gun?" Reid asked.

"Evidence," Garcia replied. "I still hate guns, tranquilizer or other."

"And you?" Reid asked.

"Peachy Perfection!" Garcia replied.

"And me?" Reid asked.

"You!" Garcia replied.

"And us?" Reid asked.

With that, Garcia lost her marbles and proceeded to kiss Reid all over his face, slobbering into his eyes and sucking his soul out through his mouth, like a Dementor, before she realized what she was doing.

"Oh my God, I am so sorry! Are you OK?" Garcia gasped.

"Are you taking advantage of me, Princess?" Reid asked, an evil little grin forming at the corners of his mouth.

"Why yes, Knight, so I am," Garcia replied, an evil little grin forming at the corners of her own mouth. "Remember, dear Sir, that you have yet to pay a price for making the Princess clean up that infernal mess in the Coffehouse..."

"Au contraire, dear Princess," Reid argued. "That was not my doing. That was an evil King, taking temporary control of a noblest Knight. It was you yourself, Princess, who converted to the Shadow and became an evil Queen."

"And so the evil Queen lives again," Garcia smiled coquettishly.

"As does the evil King," Reid grinned, baring his fangs.

"Purrrrrrr," Garcia offered the evil King.

"Wooooooof," Reid accepted the evil Queen.

At that moment, a tyrannosaur burst through the door of the GPS van, bringing with him the pristine smells of sand and sweat. The air, previously blistering, was now hot. The stars, previously invisible, were now twinkling. The spectators, previously speechless, were now full of speech.

"What the hell is going on in here?" Pierre asked, wrinkling his nose in disgust.

"Get a room!" his minions exclaimed from behind the protective shadow of their minion master.

"They already have a van!" Jared Wilson proclaimed, patting himself on the back for his genius remark.

"Gooooooo Doctors!" Melanie Hale declared, patting her boyfriend on the back for his genius remark.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" came the sound of a booming voice at the driver's side window.

"Morgan?" Reid and Garcia screamed in unison.

"And Prentiss," came the sound of a melodious voice at the passenger's side window.

"Rossi," a rough voice identified itself at the side window opposite the door.

"JJ," a softer voice identified itself at the same window.

"Hotch," a stern voice proclaimed at the back entrance.

"Pooooooop!" Reid and Garcia fell back against the floor.

"I don't want to see anymore of this, do you?" asked Hotch.

"No, I really don't," came a chorus of voices from outside the van.

"Wanna go to In-N-Out?" asked Pierre.

"Yeah!" came a loud enthusiastic chorus.

"Wait for us!" two voices hollered from inside the van.

The King and Queen stepped out of the van, the evil King leaning upon the evil Queen, his limbs slightly rubbery due to her tranking of him. The evil Queen smoothed her bangs and rearranged her glasses, swaying slightly under the weight of the evil King, but resolving to hold him up nevertheless. They entered a black SUV, removing themselves from the world of science and hurling themselves into the world of humans. For the moment, the world of humans, full of clutter and mistakes, was the only world they wished to inhabit. The world of science could wait, with its thought experiments and real experiments, to assimilate the five humans who had yet to taste the Light and the Shadow.

* * *

Drs. Penelope Garcia and Spencer Reid climbed down the ladder into The Pit, gasping at the sight that greeted them at the bottom.

Christmas lights adorned every wall and railing in the tall narrow shaft. The ten-foot by fifteen-foot space at the bottom held a computer desk, a swivel chair, a beanbag chair, and several bookcases filled with paperbacks and comics. A whiteboard covered an entire wall behind the desk. Knick-knacks - snowglobes, music boxes, lava lamps, paper flowers, fuzzy pens - covered every other surface. An impressive collection of stuffed animals lined a four-foot high ledge opposite the whiteboard. Figurines of dragons, wizards, and elves joined them on wooden planks that protected them from the rough surface of the ledge. A sparkly model of the Solar System dangled from a clothesline that ran between the third floor railing and the opposite wall. A model of the Milky Way glowed above it, between the wall and the fourth floor railing.

No princess stepped forward to bestow new names and occupations upon her honored guests. The current occupant of The Pit was nowhere to be found.

On the desk, there lived a large piece of black construction paper. On the paper, there lived two pairs of handprints, same shape, different sizes, affixed to the black surface through glow-in-the-dark finger paints. On the paint, there lived the tale of a Princess and a Knight, their story short-lived or long-lasting, whatever the future held for them.

The Philosophers climbed out of The Pit, together, into the sun-lit world above. They walked away and drove off towards the east, in an ancient Beetle that had been melted down and allowed to crystallize anew. It was ready for duty, now that it was well and whole and itself again.

"What should we name her?" asked the Queen.

"How do you know it's a her?" asked the King.

"She used to be mine, so I know it's a her," the Queen explained.

"But she was mine after she was yours, so she's ours now," the King explained.

"What should we name our Beetle?" asked the Queen.

"Anonymous," replied the King.

"Ani for short?" asked the Queen.

"Ani for short," replied the King.

"I, Queen Grendelin..." the Queen started.

"And I, King Rubik..." the King continued.

"Rulers of our mutual domain, do anoint thee Anonymous, Ani for short, and henceforth shall thee by these noble names be known," the King and Queen recited for themselves.

"And I, Anonymous, Ani for short, do swear to protect and defend thy mutual domain and thyselves, dear King and Queen, from all who dare trespass against thee, even unto the grave," the King and Queen recited for their mighty steed.

The Beetle glided, smoothly and silently, onto Interstate 15, on the way to Las Vegas and points east, to deliver its masters from one mutual domain to another. Thousands of miles stretched out ahead of it, but the Beetle didn't mind a bit. It found its own joy in the joy of its masters, and this way, it would never stand alone, on the outside looking in. The joy it witnessed was the joy of love, child-like and grown-up all at once, a superposition of all beautiful things. As with all beautiful things, love held a singular truth, "...No vestige of a beginning...No prospect of an end..."

* * *

Nerd speak clarifications

1) No vestige/No prospect Quote

Quote from a paper by James Hutton, the father of modern geology, about the cycles of change on Earth throughout its history.

Note: In my undying love for Reid and Garcia, I failed to remember the existence of Kevin Lynch until the last chapter. I like Kevin a lot, but let's just pretend that he doesn't exist for this story. I'll make it up to him by writing a story about him sometime.

Author's Note: Woohoo! Complete at last! Thanks to all readers and reviewers, especially "repeat offenders"! :D

Writing this story has been so much fun that I'm planning to write a series of stories, each starring my belovedest Reid with one other character, including all main characters from the show. Then, some kind of ultra-long team fic about a case affecting the entire US of A.

Next up: Morgan/Reid in a story entitled "Boston", in which Morgan has to be the brainy one.


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